


mercy, mercy, have on me

by customrolex



Series: come home yesterday [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Black Panther (2018) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Established Relationship, Gen, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rumlow is creepy enough to warrant an implied sexual violence warning, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-21 09:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 102,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10682673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/customrolex/pseuds/customrolex
Summary: Steve and Bucky have both worked hard to get back to normal after Steve's pardon, Ultron, and Peggy's death... Bucky can't help but think he should have seen this coming. When Rumlow came out of the woodwork, he should have known it was for nothing good.





	1. Chapter 1

'You're listening to this again?' Bucky asked, tapping the little speaker in their kitchen as he snagged a thin slice of cheese from Steve's cutting board. Steve didn't look up, too careful with a knife in his hands. He was too precise to slip, but holding a knife sometimes set his nerves on edge; today was one of those days and he felt like he should be overly careful, especially with Bucky standing right by. Nothing was going to happen—he was in complete control of himself—but he felt nervous with the knife nonetheless.  
  
'I like it,' Steve said of the music when he had enough cheese. He put the knife down and rubbed his hands along the edge of the towel he'd shoved part way in his pocket. 'I think I remember when we used to listen to it at home.'  
  
'Yeah, it sure sounds like our childhoods,' Bucky said. Steve looked up at him. It sounded like he was grumbling a little, munching on the parmesan.  
  
'Do you not like stuff that sounds like our childhood?' he asked very seriously and Bucky made a face like the idea had never occurred to him. He ate the second half of the slice he'd stolen. Steve reached and stirred the sauce.  
  
'I don't know,' Bucky admitted. 'It's old music, now. It's weird; I remember it like it was yesterday, but it feels like ages ago.'  
  
'Hm,' Steve hummed, because he didn't know what to else say to that. It was just music to him. It didn't remind him of anything, but he didn't know if he'd forgotten. Bucky didn't try to change the music, but he did steal another slice of cheese. 'How's the scarf?' Steve asked instead.  
  
'It's a shawl,' Bucky said again. Steve didn't fully understand the difference anymore, because Bucky knit a lot of different and similar things with complicated and colourful patterns now. Wool used to be too expensive for them to buy too often; Bucky would knit them utilitarian, brown socks often as he could and a set of thick mittens for Steve to wear thru each winter. Steve liked the colourful nonsense Bucky knit now instead. It suited Bucky better, quietly making something bright, than quietly making the routine sort of plain. 'It's blocked out nicely. We'll see when it dries. I didn't see before, but now that I've blocked it: there's a mistake in the lace.'  
  
'That sucks,' Steve said. Bucky had once yanked out two feet of a thick shawl to fix a dropped stitch; that was before he'd cast off and started blocking. Steve didn't think there wasn't anything Buck could do about a lace stitch now.  
  
'I know,' Bucky agreed. He reached out again, settling his hips on the counter, towards the cutting board.  
  
'Stop—Stop stealing the cheese,' Steve said, making like he was going to smack Bucky's hand away. 'I offered to make you a snack before I started making the lasagna; don't steal the uncooked lasagna.'  
  
'It's really good cheese,' Bucky complained. He watched Steve stir until Steve looked back accusingly. 'You're a terrible cook,' Bucky said as if Steve had forgotten.  
  
'Yeah, but I make a good lasagna,' Steve said. Bucky didn't say anything, but he smiled down at Steve like he had told a little joke. He also stole another slice of cheese. 'I make a good lasagna; it's pasta and cheese and meat—'  
  
'And you combine it in a perfectly edible way,' Bucky agreed. 'Scootch; lemme do the sauce.'  
  
'No, fuck off; I'm cooking. I make a decent lasagna,' Steve protested, laughing a little as Bucky tried to grab the wooden spoon from his prosthetic hand. He pulled away in jest now; Tony built him an arm that didn't hurt anybody, not even him. It wouldn't cut Bucky or his sleeves and it weighed almost precisely what his other arm did; his straight spine used to ache of the extra weight. He slept easier now. Bucky gave up on the spoon for a moment but pushed off the counter.  
  
'Oh, it's only decent, now?' Bucky asked, checking Steve with his hip. Steve didn't budge. 'Downgrading yourself, huh; that's real nice!' Steve laughed, trying to block Bucky's reach with his arm, knocking the pot a little. The doorbell rang and Steve pushed Bucky away.  
  
'Go, go; get the door,' Steve ordered. Bucky did, rounding the open shelves as he chuckled to himself. 'It's a good lasagna!' he complained, and Buck swung the door open.  
  
‘Pepper!’ Bucky cried. ‘It's good to see you! Come in.' Bucky closed the door behind her, as he tried to take her bag. 'Steve's making lasagna, if you wanna stay.'  
  
'I wish I were here just for a visit,' she said as he guided her in. 'Hi, Steve,’ she added, when he chirped a hello thru the kitchen shelves. Bucky took her bag, asked if she wanted him to take her jacket. ‘No, thanks, and it's just a PR question about you guys. I think if it were me I'd need to discuss it with my, my person, so I thought I'd drop this off and call in the morning for the PR guidance.' Bucky shot Steve a nervous glance thru the shelves. Steve turned the radio down, soft enough to only prevent a painful silence.  
  
'All right, um, have a seat at the table; I'll, uh,' Bucky said. 'I'll get you something to drink. What would you like?'  
  
Steve moved the sauce off of the heat, still stirring for a moment while Bucky got Pepper a simple ice water. 'Is this fine to leave?' he asked. Bucky leant over him, taking the spoon and poking.  
  
'Mmhm, it should be fine,' Bucky said. 'Put the lid on, I guess. You want anything to drink?'  
  
'No, thank you,' Steve replied, picking the lid up. He propped it and wandered into the kitchen to see Pepper. 'You look nice,' he remarked. Pepper had changed her bangs, not a lot, but they curved more at the edges, softer. 'I like your hair.'  
  
'Oh,' she said, patting the left side of the newly shaped section, as if she'd almost forgotten. 'Thank you.'  
  
'You look happy,' he clarified, because that was mostly why she looked nice. She gave him a shy smile, and if she were any person less composed than Virginia Potts, she would have flushed to the root.  
  
'I just—We had such a good quarter,' she admitted. 'The off-grid, green generator initiatives have finally, finally started becoming affordable, even factoring in upkeep. The installation doesn't require a dig anymore, if there's a cement pad, and the bylaws in LA have changed, so you can imagine the relief on our end.' She sounded unbelievably proud, so proud Steve felt compelled to offer congratulations. 'Thank you,' she said sincerely, and then repeated it to Bucky as he passed her an ice water. He placed a mug of tea in front of his own chair.  
  
Steve watched him for a moment, but he kept standing, tugging a T-pin from the corner of the scarf—the shawl and tugging the corner out just a bit further. He was nervous and Steve wondered why. PR shouldn't be so important now, should it? Neither of them owed the public a thing at the moment; Steve had been pardoned and Bucky wasn't a soldier anymore. The commission was over and the office Bucky ran helped dozens of other private offices and NGOs sift thru SHIELD and HYDRA's archives. They were civilians now, veterans. They shouldn't have to submit to speculation and Bucky shouldn't have to bear nervousness like that.

  
'I mean, I've been lobbying all over,' Pepper went on, sighing a little as she settled into their home. 'Municipalities have been my largest time investment. I hope it pays off. And of course, to give credit where it's due: R and D made some great strides.'  
  
'But,' she added, before they could pry anymore, 'I'm here about your PR, not—You know.' Bucky settled, sitting across the table's corner from Pepper. Steve propped his foot on Bucky's from the other side of the table. 'My personal PR reps handle you guys too, as you know.’  
  
‘There’s a photo of you guys circulating, just online now, but it might be on the early shows tomorrow,’ Pepper said. ‘There’s so little paparazzi in DC, compared to New York, but apparently just enough to catch you guys.’  
  
‘Let’s see it,’ Bucky said. Pepper pulled the B5 envelope from her lapel. She passed Bucky the envelope and he slipped a photo from manilla. 'It’s not the worst picture the paparazzi could have gotten, but it is an intimate photo,' Pepper hedged, watching Bucky’s face very carefully. 'They have worse photos of me; it's really just enough to make me ask you what you'd like to say, that's all,' she added, trying to smooth the crease between his brows.  
  
Steve got up, rounding behind Pepper's back to peek over Bucky's shoulder. He settled a hand onto the back of Bucky's chair absently.  
  
The photo showed them clearly, standing a little too close together on an otherwise-deserted subway platform. They’d obviously gone into DC proper together for the evening; someone had taken a photo of them late at night from the platform across the train bays.  
  
Steve stood too close to Bucky, mostly facing the cameraperson, and talked up at him with almost-a-smile on his face. His sleeves were bunched up to his elbows, hands shoved into coat pockets. Bucky’s hand was frozen in time, pulling a section of Steve’s hair into line with the rest of his natural part, fingertips dragging along Steve’s skin. Bucky pulled that cowlick into place a dozen times a week; Steve knew the movement accompanied a purely warm look that Bucky didn't shoot at anybody but him. It was an affectionate grooming gesture, right out of a behavioural textbook. Bucky had unknowingly turned just far enough from the camera to keep the look mostly hidden.  
  
'I’m not in the business of outing people, Bucky; disclosing a relationship is a significant thing. It’s the first time someone’s asked about your dating habits since you first came to live with us, either of you,’ Pepper said, remembering to include Steve when he looked over. ‘We can say nothing, but I think it’s always better not to leave the speculators ungrounded.'  
  
Bucky didn't say anything; he just angled the photo a bit so Steve could see it better. Steve didn't look at the photo. He looked at Bucky's frown. He didn't know what to say about the frown. They used to be so scared of being found out; Steve didn't think he'd even told his ma. He didn't know how afraid they were now, of being found out. Steve hadn't thought about it since he'd been back. He'd taken for granted that what they had was still a secret, even when he got well enough to understand the world was changed.    
  
'We're—it's not illegal anymore, is it?' he asked, because that would scare Bucky like this. Bucky shook his head.  
  
'No, it's legal in America,' Bucky said. 'We won't go to jail or nothing; I just—' Bucky broke off, shaking his head. He looked at Pepper to avoid looking up at Steve.  
  
'You just what?' Steve asked. Bucky shook his head. Steve moved his hand from the back of the chair to Bucky's back, rubbing over three of Bucky's vertebrae comfortingly. He didn't understand but he didn't like the tension in Bucky's shoulders; he tried to brush the tension away. His touch made Bucky tense more so he pulled away. He almost took a step back, but he nervously pocketed his hands instead, shoving them into his dungarees. He looked at his almost-smile in the photo. He wondered how long ago it had been taken. 'So—So what? What now?'  
  
Why did people nowadays need to ask questions about the picture at all? The world seemed a lot bigger now; Steve used to read the papers he sold voraciously and the newspaper now wasn't the only thing that was different. Now that they weren't talking about his crimes so often, Steve kept up as best he could with the news. He had the radio news and the TV news and the computer news too. He didn't sweat who was going with whom; he sweated all the fighting and hate crimes and the rallies he would have gone to when he was a braver, younger man. It was none of the public's business, to know anything about their lives; it bothered Steve more than the neighbours shooting him looks used too, more than the loudly whispered talk behind his back at the automat by the apartment they lived in before Bucky went to war, these strangers who put tension in Bucky's shoulders.  
  
'Well, people are asking: are they or aren't they?' Pepper said frankly. Bucky scratched his forehead in a way that must have hid his face from Pepper. She looked up at Steve instead. 'You guys can answer the question however you'd like, or not at all.'  
  
'Tell them our private lives are private,' Steve said, right as Bucky said, 'Tell them we’re not together.' Pepper winced at the look on Steve’s face, even if he tried to shutter the hurt before Bucky could turn to look up at him.  
  
'How's that?' Steve asked. He tilted his head slightly in the silence, waiting for Bucky to explain it to him. Bucky floundered; Steve hadn't seen him flounder since Steve had first been an outpatient, barely himself and confusing to the person who used to know him best. Bucky opened and closed his mouth and shifted to face Steve more.  
  
'Well, it’s not anybody’s business, so we tell them there’s nothing to it—' Bucky said after taking a breath. He stopped when Steve looked away. Steve didn't know why he minded at all. It wasn't anyone's business and it shouldn't matter what Bucky said. ‘We tell them the same thing the Smithsonian has in the Commandos' exhibit: best friends from childhood, nothing else to it.’  
  
Steve shook his head.  
  
'If it's not people's business, why don't we say it's not people's business?' Steve asked, trying to keep his voice as level as was possible. He had to pin down all the words that were pure gut reaction, matching the caustic taste in his mouth. He wanted to shout to deflect the squirming feeling, but Bucky was tensed up like there was an alien, giant snake crawling towards him. He didn't understand the tension in Bucky's shoulders but he wanted to understand it before Bucky knew how much hearing that fucking hurt Steve.  
  
'I should leave you guys to talk,' Pepper said perceptively before Bucky had the chance to reply, standing. The movement broke their staring contest; they both looked up at her. Steve realised how much tension was in his own frame; Bucky had said nothing else to it and apparently that was what made the acid, nauseous twisting in Steve's stomach.  
  
He didn't want Pepper to see how sick he felt. He chickened out, leaving the dining room thru the kitchen. He started to retreat to their bedroom but then he hesitated, in the hall of his own apartment, like the space was too intimate for him to be permitted into right now. He went into the map room instead, the second bedroom where Sam stayed sometimes. Steve stared at the maps pinned all over the room. He hated them sometimes, the constant reminder of how much of the globe HYDRA had permeated.  
  
'I'm sorry,' Pepper said in the other room as Steve sat heavily on the foot of the bed. 'I know this is an unfair conversation for the two of you to have to have because of TMZ.'  
  
'What am I supposed to do here?' Bucky asked her. 'I mean, what's the right—' He broke off.    
  
'I don't know,' Pepper replied. 'I had to release a statement confirming my relationship with Tony, but it's not the same—it's a disclosure for you in a way dating some guy isn't for me. I can see how uncomfortable all this makes you.'  
  
'I'm not uncomfortable,' Bucky protested immediately, and Steve could tell it was a lie even muffled thru the room he was hiding in.  
  
'Yes, you are,' Pepper told him. 'That's OK. My advice is to go be uncomfortable with Steve. Be honest, even tho it isn't easy.' Bucky said something else, too quiet for Steve to hear but a low, rumbling murmur of his unhappy sweetheart. 'Well, he's upset. He's got a right to be upset like you've got a right to be uncomfortable. Just make sure you guys end up at a place where you can both live with yourselves, all right?'  
  
'Give me a hug,' she ordered him. 'I know,' she added sympathetically, after a moment. 'I know, but you'll be fine.'  
  
'I'll bring breakfast?' she offered. 'OK. I'll see you around eight-thirty tomorrow. Give him a hug too, from me, OK?' The front door opened and closed and Steve didn't climb to his feet to face the music.  
  
It was a few full minutes before Bucky appeared in the doorway to the spare bedroom—and what a concept that was. He looked interminably sad, leaning against the doorjamb.  
  
'Hey,' Bucky said. 'You OK?'  
  
'I'm upset,' Steve replied, a little harsher than he meant to. Bucky's face didn't change. 'What, am I just some guy you know?' Steve challenged.  
  
'No, but—I have very private feelings for you. I feel—' Bucky breathed deeply, and finished lamely, '—privately.'  
  
'I know,' Steve said. 'So do I.' He felt privately about Bucky, too; of course, he did.

Steve had confessed every detail he had of almost a century of torture to the whole world; they knew more about his life and what happened to him than he did. He had very few things that could still be private, that didn't belong to historians or the people in the streets who told him he was a criminal in passing, who told him he shouldn't be allowed outside, that he should be ashamed. He knew the value of keeping a part of your life from the newscycle, from the public. He didn't have a lot that was his and nobody else's. He valued his secrets, the ones rightly kept.   
  
'That doesn't mean I would lie about this.'  
  
'Steve, _look_ at the fucking photograph!' Bucky snapped, voice raising just a hair, ignoring the fact they’d left the photo in the dining room. He straightened from his lean, angry, but he made no effort to come closer to Steve.  
  
'Yeah, we're standing upright and you’re touching my hair,' Steve retorted, taking out all the emotion of the photo, reducing it to facts that couldn't be disputed, to absolutes. 'There’s no kissing for the neighbours to flap their gums over; we’re just _standing_ there and if we get questions about it, you think we should lie to the entire world and say we’re just friends?'  
  
'Less than this picture coulda had us in front of Philips,' Bucky ground out, fuming, 'and you think saying _it’s personal; it's private_ isn’t basically a confession?'  
  
'A _confession_ , Buck?' Steve echoed. 'Why are you getting defensive?'  
  
'It’s not a defence,' Bucky snapped. 'Do you wanna go on a brunch show with two vapid hosts and let 'em ask all kind of awful questions? You want them to speculate about our lives when we don't go on? Do you wanna sort a new kind of hate mail and death threats out of our mailbox? That's how this will end up.'  
  
'Buck, it isn't about telling anyone—' Steve tried, getting barrelled over.  
  
'Do you want people gossiping about what we mean to each other, talking about who we are—what we've got?' Bucky went on.  
  
'No—'  
  
'Well, Pepper's already getting questions about it, so it kind of is about telling people or not,' Bucky told him, his voice dripping with derision.  
  
Steve wanted to say something to that, but an emotion was bubbling up in his chest and his thoughts wouldn't form in a row. Steve covered his face with his hands. For a moment, he marvelled at the fact he could feel this intensely without feeling pain. He felt almost angry. He wasn't sure if he was angry; his anger used to grow slow but steady, to linger and stew into every molecule, to lash out at anything it could, like a lion licking its persistently pained paw. This was not that. This was so much closer to what Melissa had taught him was frustration. He didn't need to lash out. He took a moment to cover his face and breathe; the awful feeling calmed enough to let him think.  
  
Bucky, for all Steve could feel fear and rage rolling off him, waited for Steve to lower his palms and start the fight again. Steve didn't know how Bucky always knew when he was done talking or when he simply needed a minute to gather his thoughts thru the sieve of scars in his head, but Bucky knew, every time without fail.  
  
'Not telling and lying are different,' Steve said when he could, forcibly flat. 'If this is nobody's business, you should say that this is nobody's business.'  
  
'I am saying that,' Bucky told him.  
  
'No, you're _denying_ me!' Steve said. Bucky snapped his mouth shut. 'It is one thing to want privacy, but it's quite another to want people to think that I'm _nothing_ to you.' The tension was so thick that Steve thought he could stand a spoon in the air. The silence didn't last long, just long enough to stop anyone from shouting properly.  
  
'I think this thing is ours and no one else’s; I agree,’ Steve murmured, gone soft against the edge of the quiet, ‘but there’s nothing wrong with it, and I don’t care if people figure it's going on because we weren’t careful enough about standing upright next to each other.'  
  
'If we have to lie about getting caught next to each other like that, then I can't stand next to you like that,' Steve said. 'I'd have to be careful in public. I already can't hold your hand or—I mean, I don't need anything to change; I don't want us to do anything different. But I want to worry about standing next to you in public even less.'  
  
'I don’t want you to deny me,' Steve admitted, feeling weak and looking down at his own hands. 'You’re treating this like an accusation and you shouldn't—I have a lot of accusations; you shouldn't be one of 'em. I've done things that are—You're not anything I'm guilty of.' Steve stumbled to a stop. He shook his head. He wasn't saying exactly what he meant. His throat ached to force any of this out; he didn't try again. Steve knew when Bucky needed time to think of what to say too; they matched.  
  
Bucky sighed. He crossed his arms and moved to sit next to Steve. He didn't sit more than an inch away. He moved to twist his fingers for a moment before forcing himself not to fidget.   
  
'I'm not ashamed of you,' Bucky offered, after a silence. Steve nodded, even if he felt doubt, from deep inside himself and not from Bucky's sincere voice. 'It's not that at all. It's not about denying you, to me. It's just—' Bucky abandoned his words. He shook his head. 'I don't know.'  
  
Steve tried to take Bucky's hand. He didn't quite pull away, but Steve took his hand back all the same. 'I don't know,' Bucky said again. Steve could tell he just didn't know how to say.    
  
'Why are you ashamed, then?' Steve asked, trying to put a finger on it. 'If it's not of me.'  
  
Steve couldn't help but feel like it had to be him, that of course Bucky was ashamed to love him. Steve Rogers had been worthy of a guy like Bucky Barnes once. Steve remembered promising Bucky in another life that they weren't going to go to Hell; he'd never doubted that they deserved to be together and to be happy, all at once. Steve Rogers had been worth something then; Steve Rogers had been worth enough to be worthy of a person like Bucky Barnes. That was before Steve Rogers was molded into a weapon, before he'd let men suffer and suffer and die all around him in Azzano, watched them torn apart while he was made stronger and worse, before he'd become the Winter Soldier, before he'd killed children and parents and innocents and presidents and rebels who could have lead the people to overthrow tyrants. He'd been worthy before he'd been an instrument to manipulate the world. He'd been worthy of somebody like Bucky before he had been turned into a murderer, an arsonist, a terrorist, a heartless and mindless being without the ability to reason or doubt or protect anyone or anything. Of course Bucky was ashamed of him, at least a little; of course. Steve was ashamed of himself.  
  
'I don't want people to ask me questions about how I feel, or who I am,' Bucky told him, like that was all it was. His voice shook a little; Steve listened like every word was carved into gold and rubies. 'I feel—I just don't want to have to explain myself. I don't know how I could explain it, but I feel it very strongly.' Bucky shrugged one shoulder, in that way he did when he was lying about being upset.  
  
Bucky confessed, 'I like being your best girl.' Steve had known that; he just hadn't thought, somehow, that that was the problem with the photo. Bucky would not meet his eye.  
  
He went on, without pausing. 'I like that, and I don't want to have to explain that to anyone. I like who I am; I don't need a bunch of questions—there's—' Bucky stumbled. Steve took his hand and he didn't let go this time. Bucky held him back. 'You never make me explain.'  
  
'Well, I know you,' Steve said, unable to explain how he'd recognised that part of Bucky when he'd woken up. He had never needed it questioned or explained, not in their day that he could remember, and not now when, explained or not, neither of them would end up in jail for it. He loved Bucky; that hadn't changed even after HYDRA stole everything from him. 'I knew you even when the programme was all I had.' Bucky sighed like Steve had lifted a stone from his chest.  
  
'But you're right,' Bucky told him. 'I just—You're right; it's nobody's business and that's that.' He gnawed his lower lip.  
  
'But?' Steve said, prompting.  
  
'I mean, it was always a matter of time,' Bucky said, avoiding Steve's concerned gaze. 'When you were gone, when I thought you were dead?'  
  
'Yeah?'  
  
'It was when Nat worked for SHIELD,' Bucky said. He linked his fingers, and Steve read nervousness. He dropped his head into Bucky's shoulder like he used to when they were in Brooklyn, sitting on the roof, the precious times they were up there alone. Bucky let him. He maybe leant into Steve too. 'She'd come and hang out like she did when we lived in New York, and I found out later she was recording everything. SHIELD wanted to supervise me like they would have if Tony hadn't gotten me out, and I trusted her like an _idiot_. She _told_ me SHIELD sent her the first time it ever happened; I should've shut the damn door.' Bucky shook his head at himself.  
  
'Remind me why SHIELD sued you?' Steve asked. He remembered that, but it had been a long time since it had come up in conversation; he couldn't remember what for.  
  
'For samples of my genetic sequence, so they could try to recreate Doctor Erskine's serum, which they had the rights to. They figured if they owned the serum, they owned my DNA, the serum's only product,' Bucky reminded him. 'Nat had other orders too, ones that had nothing to do with the lawsuit, so there are a bunch of tapes somewhere in the info dump that—' Bucky broke off for the barest of seconds. He gritted his jaw and went on.  
  
'There're tapes of me talking about you, what you meant to me when you were alive.'

Steve didn't need to look up to know that thinking about that time still almost made Bucky cry. Even tho Steve had never been really dead, he knew Bucky still carried the time he'd been a widow. Steve couldn't imagine how hard it must have been to wake up alone for hundreds and hundreds of days; he'd woken up alone while Bucky was at war, but he'd never woken up with Bucky dead. He'd never had to grieve for Bucky; the closest he'd come was those moments with Howard, when Howard had told the Soldier about the plane crash and something inside, something that the asset couldn't feel or understand and didn't even remember, had cried until it had been sedated.   
  
'I mean, fuck, Stevie, I thought you were dead for, like, two years,' Bucky managed. 'It was a long time to miss you. You were dead, and you were dead 'cause of me.'  
  
'I wasn't dead, and it wasn't 'cause of you,' Steve reminded him. Bucky let out a little scoff.  
  
'Yeah,' he said in a tone that meant anything but. Steve left it alone.  
  
'Do you talk about the other part?' Steve asked, a little hesitantly.  
  
'No, no,' Bucky said, then quickly: 'I don't know. Who remembers things like—I was just talking to a friend and she was wearing a wire.' Steve tried to find something to say, before Bucky went on. 'I don't think so. I barely talk to you about it, and that's different. You were dead. I needed to talk about you because I'd lost you. The other thing is just how it is, but I'd lost you. I was greiving.'  
  
'But anyway, there's no way to get the tapes—or, I guess, recordings—out of the online archives. We dumped everything because there was no way to know corrupt secrets from official ones. We exposed a lot of good counterintelligence work. We exposed a lot more by way of HYDRA, other corruption too; I mean, I think we did the right thing by dumping all SHIELD reserves, but one of the consequences are the recordings waiting to be found that out me. Out us.'  
  
'But you're right,' Bucky said again. 'I should be able to say it's not your business, and move on with my day; it just scares the hell out of me. I should have dealt with the parts of it that scare me, 'cause I knew this was coming. I didn't think it would be a photo that started it; I thought it would be those moments Nat stole.' He sighed heavily. Steve reached out and took his hand again. Bucky let him this time. He held Steve's hand between two of his own.  
  
'It's gonna be OK,' Steve said. 'People are always gonna think whatever they want; it doesn't change what we have. I'm not gonna let anybody give you any shit.' Bucky huffed a small laugh. Steve used to say that in their day, even when any swing he took at someone who called anybody a queer ended up seeing his own ass kicked.  
  
'I know,' Bucky agreed.  
  
'We can tell them to fuck off,' Steve said, bumping Bucky's side with his elbow. 'We can say private or personal, or we can not say a damn thing at all. Nobody but us has any right to any of us.'  
  
'Yeah,' Bucky agreed, halfheartedly.  
  
'Any of this,' Steve repeated. 'We can just keep living our lives, let the idiots gossip.'  
  
'I am proud of you, you know?' Bucky said, lifting his head from Steve's to look down at him. Steve twisted his neck, looking up without lifting his head from Bucky's big, warm shoulder. 'I'm not ashamed of you. I'm proud to be the person you love. I'm proud of how hard you try, how far you've come from what they did to you. I think you're the strongest person I've ever met, including our mothers.' Steve didn't know how reply to that; he lifted Bucky's hand to pass him a gentle kiss.  
  
'I think I wanna keep this our secret until they find the recordings on their own.'  
  
'We can do that,' Steve agreed. He flicked his eyes between Bucky's searching him, making sure he was all right. 'I'm proud of you too.'  
  
'You'd tell the whole world about us if you had to, tho, huh?' Bucky asked, pressing the issue one more time.  
  
'Nah,' he said honestly, 'I wouldn't, really. I'd say mind your business. They know so much about what happened to me; they don't get to make me tell them this too. It really is nice that there's something that's just ours. I wish I could've told my mom, tho, before she died. I wish I'd been brave enough to tell her.'  
  
'What would Sarah have said?' Bucky asked. Steve hesitated.  
  
'I don't know,' Steve admitted. He felt strangely ashamed, to finally admit to Bucky that he barely remembered her. 'I don't remember her very well; what I do remember isn't how she felt about you. I remember most of the important things, I guess. I don't remember what I thought she'd have done if she found out.'  
  
'My ma woulda spat on our graves,' Bucky sighed. 'Hell, she might be spinning in hers.'  
  
'Yeah, but she hated me anyway,' Steve told him, chuckling a bit. 'I remember she used to get sore with you when you'd visit me when I was sick. You used to tell her I was your best friend, and I was dyin', and she wouldn't care at all.' Bucky huffed, the little laugh of a bad memory so far away that its sting had become a tickle. Steve pitched his voice to match what Missus Barnes had sounded like: 'Oh, look, it's raining, and Little Stevie Rogers is dying; these facts are plain as day.'  
  
'Yeah, she thought you were a feeble-minded runt,' Bucky allowed. 'She didn't hate you, tho; she liked you in her own way. If she'd known the asthma was really in your lungs, not your head, she mighta liked you for real.' Steve didn't buy that for a second, but it didn't matter.  
  
'Maybe she would have spat on my grave,' Steve offered, 'and woulda talked at your tombstone about how sorry she was to have let me corrupt you.'  
  
'Maybe,' Bucky agreed lightly, like that actually helped. Steve wondered why he had stung at the idea of Bucky denying him to a world filled with people he didn't know, but didn't sting at all at the idea that his mother might have blamed all the queerness on him, or that the idea comforted Bucky a little. 'Anyway, I'm sorry.'  
  
'Sorry? You don't gotta be sorry,' Steve said.  
  
'You were upset,' Bucky replied. 'I'm sorry I upset you.'  
  
'Yeah, well, we talked it out,' Steve said. 'You got a right to feel the way you do; maybe I don't got a right to get sore about it.'  
  
'No, I shouldn't deny you,' Bucky promised. He stroked over Steve's skin with a gentle thumb. Steve remembered Bucky applying eleven pounds of pressure in the visiting room of the CIA Adjunct Hospital, over the thinnest plates of metal. Bucky had accepted him even when he couldn't force full sentences past his phantom muzzle. Bucky didn't have to press for Steve to feel it now. 'We shouldn't say anything at all.'  
  
'OK,' Steve agreed. He thought of nothing for a moment but how nice it was to be pressed against Bucky's side. 'Will you check on my white sauce?' Bucky laughed, booming and loud suddenly.  
  
'Yeah, Stevie,' he agreed, pulling away to stand up. 'Yeah, I'll fix up your decent lasagna.'  
  
'It's gonna turn out great,' Steve said, hurrying after him. 'I'm a terrible cook, but I got you to fix it all for me, don't I?'  
  
'Yeah, you got me,' Bucky agreed.  
  
^^^  
  
_The asset became aware._ _  
__  
__The asset was woken when the slick gel began to drip, drop, drip, from the mask and the chin, sliding along the skin. The asset’s eyes opened, stinging against the cryogel and blurred from the cold pressure of the eyes. There were shapes beyond the glass. Some of the shapes moved. The handlers could move. The handlers were people._ _  
__  
__People in crowds—grabbing someone's hand as their seat at the top of the Ferris wheel swayed—someone calling his name, a name—people on sidewalks, as he shouted the headlines, lungs stinging for enough air—the jostle of somebody knocking shoulders without vindictiveness as they passed, hurried and_ human _, brief—being small as a child, being held with his knobby knees over someone's hips as he clutched their shoulder, being carried—moments that belonged to people. The asset was a weapon._ _  
__  
__The asset became aware._ _  
__  
__Later, someone’s hand was around the asset’s throat; someone stroked the chin with a thumb, pulling a mouth open. The someone leant close and whispered:_ you look perfect. _The asset had heard that before but last time it did not instil fear. The asset did not know when it had heard anything gentle that didn't make fear. It didn't matter when. The asset did not exist without a mission._ _  
__  
__The asset did not exist without a mission. Calm and passivity were required in front of handlers. The asset needed to be calm. There were policemen and handcuffs and someone the asset didn't know tried to ask for help, for a lawyer, for new air._ _  
__  
__The asset became aware. The asset panicked, with cold gel thick around the rest of the body but draining quickly. The asset tried to pull away from the mask, from the warm air and medicated gas as the handlers woke the weapon. The asset did not want to leave the chamber. The asset was too cold to shake; the asset could stay in the chamber in the warm air until it warmed enough the body began to shake. The asset did not let itself shiver. It stayed still. It did not want to leave the chamber._ _  
__  
__The asset was aware._ _  
__  
__Outside the chamber would hurt: warming up, compliance tests, recalibration, system maintenance. Pins and needles, lacerations and trick protocols and pain, the chair and the loss of the things trick protocols gave him—what were those things, memory? what did he remember when he was a thing, when they had made or remade the weapon—then surgery and a scabby scalp or the gasping sensation that came the second the plates from his skull lifted._ _  
__  
__The asset became aware: concern: the pull of magnetic restraints in the chair—already the chair? not the chair, please, not the chair, not again; the asset had no choice—the pull of the metal bones underneath soft muscles and flesh, the terror of knowing that, even so well made, there was no strength the asset had which could lift it from the magnet. The asset trembled with some sensational feeling from deep, deep inside the chest, from somewhere vaguer than the physical. The asset had nothing but the physical. The asset gasped: fear. The asset had nothing but the mission._ _  
__  
__The asset waited and electricity spiked thru the brain, cutting away any memory of the cryogel, of the panic of the breathing tube being pulled out, of the swinging, nauseating calm the gas gave him, the way that calm snapped away with the first cuts into his scalp or the first crackles of electricity across the scars._ _  
__  
__‘Good morning, soldier,’ someone said. The asset did not look over. The asset did not exist. The asset was not aware._ _  
__  
__‘Ready to comply,’ the programme said. The asset wondered at having a voice before a mission. Wondering hurt. Weapons felt no pain, but wondering hurt. Nothings did not feel pain. The asset was nothing before a mission. Wondering hurt._ _  
__  
__‘I have a mission for you,’ the handler said. The asset felt warm; the asset felt a set of fingers, a thumb, feet, knees. The asset knew the struggle of design had been worth it; the asset would exist with a mission. The asset could be warm when there was a mission. ‘Sanction and extract. No witnesses.’_ _  
__  
__The asset became aware._ _  
__  
__There was a bike—and the child, he remembered the child, in the place with the bloodstained white carpets—the asset could drive many vehicles. He had saved the child but the parents were dead. There was nothing but the mission; this memory was not of the mission at hand. The asset didn't understand. The asset had a bike. The asset had not existed Before. The asset had not existed before this mission; the asset remembered the child from an impossible time. There were blue bags in the trunk, in a case that fit perfectly in the firechest welded to the bike, something the asset knew, something the asset had—there was nothing but the mission and the mission was crawling, dazed, asking for help, begging for his wife. The asset looked._ _  
__  
__The child looked back. It was awake. The asset could not kill it. It had orders, but it couldn't. The child looked so afraid and children were so precious; they shouldn't be afraid. The asset looked at the bloody knife in its hand, the one it was meant to use: the mother had been bleeding and he had wanted to stop it. The asset could report the unknown protocol instead. The asset could breathe—_ _  
__  
__The target coughed, stunned. The target crawled by the roadside, his fine suit splattered with blood. The asset had a target. The asset had to kill him. The asset knew him which was impossible. He begged for his wife; he had always loved his wife. The asset killed him. The asset killed his wife. The asset should know the names. The asset did not exist without a mission._ _  
__  
__‘Well done, soldier,’ the voice said. He took the blue bags away and something deep down protested. There was a reason the asset knew the target; he was dead all the same. The asset was nothing without a mission._ _  
__  
_ Steve became aware.  
  
He woke up so suddenly he felt disoriented. Where the fuck was he? Was he the weapon? Was he real?  
  
Steve didn't move; he didn't let his breath heave or shake. Real things had breath. He didn't let any part of him shake; when the asset was warm enough to shiver, they were ready to take it out of the chamber—no, he was Steve. He wasn’t a weapon; he could tell he was human as if the world were painted in different language and colours. His heart didn't hurt; Howard had been dead for a long time and Tony had helped him anyway. For a long time, Steve thought Tony had helped him anyway, was his friend anyway, held him dear anyway. Steve didn't know anymore.   
  
Steve couldn’t think about Howard or Tony; Steve needed to report the mission. Bucky was asleep beside him; luckily, Steve hadn’t woken him. He actually slept so little because of his serum, let alone his own nightmares. Steve couldn’t wake him. Steve slipped out of bed with every ounce of stealth he possessed. He snuck out.  
  
Steve let his lungs give the wheeze they wanted too once he stood in the map room; his inhaler was in the bedroom and he was fine, anyway. He needed to report, but he might remember the dream while he resisted blurting out all the details he remembered, resisting whispering them to himself until they dissolved, scribbling when his obedient, flat palm would let him. He could ignore the pain long enough to remember; he knew he could. He had to start with waking up.  
  
He stared at the maps, at the blank stretches, wondering. He remembered waking up, receiving the mission, but where? The building didn't make sense; it wasn't the vault in DC or any of the other little, green, square pins that marked now-dismantled cryochambers or the round ones for the recalibration machines. The room he'd woken up in wasn’t close to where Howard was killed, Steve knew, but he couldn’t think of where it might be instead. He tried to think of the handler’s voice, the language he spoke, any clue; he couldn’t pull anything useful up, just the mechanical sensation of understanding parameters and assigning specifications. The sound was empty in his head. The missing moments didn't make sense. The asset usually remembered flashes or could feel the edges of what was missing like ripped pages, images he could draw if he pushed past the pain. He could remember the drawing without it hurting so much; he could use the drawing to find the memory without digging so much thru rubble in his head.  
  
This wasn’t that. Steve was missing time, really missing it. The asset had not left him with impressions and shapes and the feeling of fear and the numb moments of killing he could see so clearly he could feel his metal arm again, like a void overlaying the sensitive bioplast Tony had given him.  
  
He gasped, or tried to. He could see—he could _feel_ repressurization as the chamber melted ice; he could see the chair; he could feel the magnets. He didn't know where he was. He shook his head, staring at the map. The car—the _car_ ; he stole the car—no. No, he burned the car, the bodies. He stole something else.  
  
Howard. His wife. Steve should know her name. He’d asked again and again since waking up. The sound was empty in his mind. He couldn’t remember her name.  
  
‘Hey,’ a voice—Bucky said. It was Bucky. Steve wondered how long he'd been standing there, if that was his first or fourth attempt to get thru to Steve.  
  
He glanced back a little, as much as he could without looking away from the map—he had to have woken up somewhere; it had been real, right? He did not panic when Bucky touched his back so lightly, afraid to put anything like pressure on Steve’s chest when his breathing was like this. Bucky stood just behind him, so Steve could see him in his peripheral but his nightmare couldn't compel him to look away.  
  
'D'you wanna you stop reporting?’ Bucky murmured, gently, suggesting; Steve nodded desperately. It felt like an order. Steve realised he’d been whispering details, whispering that something was missing, asking where the mission began, _whispering details, whispering that something was missing, asking where the mission began, whispering details_ —His words stumbled to a halt; he wanted to stop. He did want to stop, even if it hurt. He heard himself whimper, and then start to whisper again. 'Stop,' Bucky said, giving Steve something closer to an order so he could. Bucky's hand stroked, soothing. Steve tried to lean into it, dizzy and confused. The dream stopped feeling so real and he could try to let the details of the dream drift away. Steve only felt impulses and compulsions now when nightmares struck like this; in normal life, no one could make Steve do anything he didn't want to. Steve wished his brain would wake up the rest of the way, let him remember what normal life was now.  
  
He wondered how long he'd been awake, out of bed, if Bucky had woken with him gone. He tried to ask but he couldn't make the words come out.  
  
He couldn’t remember where he’d woken up in the dream either; he couldn't think of what base he'd seen in the dream. It wasn't any of the ones on the maps, but that meant nothing. They were missing something anyway. Bucky told him: ‘Breathe for me, nice and slow.’  
  
Steve’s breath scraped in and wouldn’t go out in anything but an insufficient strain, barely enough to let him get anything new.  
  
_’S just panic_ , Steve tried to say, but it ended up being a thought. He wasn’t sure there was a difference between panic and asthma when he felt like this, if, at this point in the panic, one thing didn't trigger the other. Bucky held out a flat palm, passively appearing in Steve’s eyeline, soft enough to not alarm him. Steve recognised his inhaler in Bucky’s palm. He didn't forget constant details about his life like that anymore. He couldn’t think of how to use it, but he knew what it was meant to do.  
  
It was an offer of help. It would help.  
  
‘This is for you,’ Bucky said, and he probably knew the gentle offer was as good as an order. Steve took it. His prosthetic did not shake. It was blue. His arm was blue. He had been home a long time because this arm was different, soft; it didn't hurt anyone. ‘Do you know what you're holding?’ Steve couldn't speak but he nodded. If he spoke he’d start whispering details, whispering that something was missing, asking where the mission began. ‘If you need it, or want it, you use it, OK?’ Bucky prompted. ‘Can you show me that you hear me?’ Steve nodded again, but he did that when he didn't hear people too; it didn't help Bucky much, Steve knew.  
  
‘OK,’ Steve managed. His voice stayed locked up after he said it. 'I was gone.' Steve did not let the asset report.  
  
‘You’re here. You're OK,’ Bucky said, settling his hand more firmly along Steve’s neck. He tilted his head back into Bucky’s hand; he could feel the warmth of Bucky’s body. Bucky ran so hot now. Steve tried to tilt his airway up and open. He didn't want to keep whispering, reporting, asking.  
  
‘You’re OK; I got you,’ Bucky promised.  
  
‘Help me,’ Steve croaked, lifting his hand. He knew what the inhaler was, but he hadn't had these before. He used to tug air thru herb cigarettes with desperate effort, wasting matches until his lungs loosened enough to keep it lit, canoeing the papered roll badly enough to salvage singed herbs to roll again instead of trying to relight them. He didn't know how to use it, not when he was panicked and he couldn’t remember where he’d woken up. There was a base they hadn’t found, that he didn't know. He wanted to whisper details, that something was missing, that he didn't know where the mission began, that he’d failed, been defeated; someone had him outdone.  
  
Bucky helped. He held the inhaler in Steve’s hand. Steve could see him place a thumb over the dull, silver part. Bucky was showing him without condescension. Bucky lifted their hands to Steve’s mouth, telling him when to breathe, to hold, to exhale. He rubbed at Steve’s neck, asked if he needed more.  
  
‘I can’t remember,’ Steve said instead. Bucky left the little tube in Steve’s hand; he felt better holding it, even in a plastic hand. ‘I can’t remember. I killed Howard—and I—I stole something from him and I was gone when I woke up; I’m missing time, Bucky. I don’t know where I woke up.’  
  
‘Howard died near Albany,’ Bucky offered. Steve took another hit of the inhaler, just the way Bucky had shown him. He thought of the scariest attacks he’d had as a child, how different his life would have been with one of these from the get-go.  
  
‘I didn't wake up near Albany,’ Steve whispered when he could. ‘Far away.’ He could feel the cryochamber’s intubation line in his throat. He coughed, like the air in his home with Bucky might deaden him too, get him ready for the ice.  
  
‘OK,’ Bucky said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Come back to bed. I don’t think I can sleep now, but you should try to get a couple more hours.’  
  
‘Where did I wake up?’ Steve asked no one. No one answered. ‘Why don’t I know? I can usually tell I’m missing things, feel the—I can feel what I did when they had the asset, you know?’  
  
‘I know,’ Bucky said, like he really did. That gave Steve pause. He blinked.  
  
‘Have we talked about this before?’  
  
‘There are some missions that drive you to finish your report when you wake up. I always write down the stuff you say,’ Bucky told him. ‘We usually have about this conversation. It’s new that you’ve started remembering that we have this conversation. Fourth time, nonconsecutively.'  
  
‘Hm,’ Steve said. It hurt to remember, to let this feel familiar, like something he might be able to sort out.  
  
'I mean,' Bucky added, like he thought it would comfort Steve, 'you always remember in the morning, but you've started remembering when you're not yourself like this too.'  
  
The old Steve Rogers could have figured this out in a second. He could have stormed an airport and stolen a plane and jetted off to fix it, sure as day. He used to be able to do anything, with Bucky at his side besides. He wouldn’t have stumbled into a spare bedroom wallpapered with maps and pins so many times that his own addled brain could let it feel familiar past whatever was holding back all his other memories.  
  
‘I’ve got all the details of the reports you give written down,’ Bucky offered him, reminding him. Steve knew the notebooks he'd filled with reports, lining the desk of the guest room. ‘You’ll look at it in the morning, but if you try before you sleep some more, you’ll have a bad day. You know that.’  
  
‘Sleep,’ Steve croaked. He felt like crying. It was so important, what he remembered, like someone was left behind and needed to be found, or like a fire had been left unattended, like he needed to find a lost ember before it burned down the cabin.  
  
‘Yeah, it’s good to sleep,’ Bucky promised.  
  
‘Do I help you like this?’ Steve asked. ‘When you can’t breathe after sleeping?’  
  
‘You don’t bring me an inhaler, but yeah,’ Bucky said. 'You take care of me.' He huffed a little laugh. He stroked Steve’s hair, tucking it behind his ear like he always did. Steve wondered if Bucky had liked his hair this much when it was short and thin, before Zola. He shook his head; it didn't make sense that he'd be gone when he woke up; he didn't remember enough of killing Howard to match it all to a timeline that made sense. 'Yeah, matoki, we’re a pair, just like always.’  
  
‘Birds,’ Steve said, resisting Bucky’s gentle hand which wanted to lead him back to bed. He wondered if his shakiness would fade by the morning, when Steve woke up again in a few hours. He could feel the intubation line in his throat, and the taste of albuterol stung his tongue. He didn't know which sensation was real. He didn't know and couldn't ask. The asset was not allowed to speak without orders.  
  
‘Birds of a feather,’ Bucky agreed. ‘You can look at your report in the morning; come on.’  
  
‘Where did I wake up? Why was I so far away? Why would they take me so far away?’ Steve asked. ‘How did they take me so far away? Why don't I remember?’  
  
‘You’ll remember more after you wake up properly; you know that,’ Bucky said. There weren't answers. Steve knew he wouldn't wake up with answers. The cabin would have to burn down; responders could trace the flame to the ember Steve had lost. 'Come on.' Steve resisted and took another hit of the inhaler, but he couldn't tell if he were really breathless or not.  
  
Steve hated feeling frantic like this. He hated the panic of confusion. He hated the compulsions of the programming. He couldn't believe he used to live with them all the time. They hurt so much and he used to have so many. He resisted Bucky’s hand, trying to turn him away from the maps, because something made him. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted Bucky to stop the frantic feeling. ‘You can’t remember now; come on.’  
  
‘Birds,’ Steve said again, but he meant to thank Bucky for helping. His chest was loose enough to breathe. There was a notebook out of place on the desk; Bucky listened to his reports when this happened. Steve could remember: in the morning, he'd know he'd had a nightmare but he wouldn't be able to remember it; the compulsions would be gone too. He would reread the old and read the new in the morning. Bucky’s handwriting was all thru the book, looking elegant, inky, and thin next to Steve’s blockier print. In the morning, he'd read what Bucky had written and he'd try to make sense of it when his brain was working again. He was better than this, usually.  
  
‘It’s not gonna be all right,’ Steve said, and he felt able to stop resisting Bucky’s gentle, patient efforts to move him away from the map. 'We're missing something.'  
  
‘I know,’ Bucky said. ‘It’s OK. Come on.’ Steve nodded. His steps shook but he went.  
  
When Bucky tucked him under the blankets and into his chest, Steve realised he was home.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky secretly hated his therapist.

He assumed she was used to that. Steve loved Melissa with a unique and precious devotion, but Bucky imagined most people who had painful shit they needed to be dredged up at least sometimes resented the dredger. People came to Elizabeth's office because they were in pain; he had to believe everyone thought of it as a painful space. He didn't even hate her specifically; she was actually kind of funny when she didn't have that business-thinking face on. He hated coming here because it was different than going to the weekly group at the VA. Coming here felt like admitting he needed real help, like he was still deeply broken. He came less and less often now, with the last HYDRA strike and Ultron about a year behind him. He didn't hate her, not really; he hated feeling weak and vulnerable, naked in a way group didn't force him to feel.

She asked how he was and he'd clammed right up. Forty-seven seconds passed, in which Bucky opened his mouth and said nothing, closed it, and chuckled nervously. He was such a fucking idiot. It was a normal God damn question; he could even just say a small talk response, anything but silence.

'Well?' Elizabeth pressed. Bucky shrugged. He wanted to say: _the nightmares have improved in general, for sure, but then I had one last week that made me sick and twice since._

'I'm fine,' he lied instead, hasty. 'I'm fine, really. Better.' She looked down at the little notebook she had balanced on her crossed knees, then rummaged in the sleek, leather pencil case she had attached to the outside of her wheelchair's sturdy seatguard. She took out one of her nice pens and for some reason that made him feel he'd fucked up.

'Better,' she prompted, as she removed and posted the pen lid. 'You made an appointment outside of our usual rotation to see me because you're better.' She stared at him. He shrugged again, like an idiot.

'Yeah.' She made a note.

Bucky was being evasive and he knew it. He'd asked her to see him and now he was being a chicken. Elizabeth blinked at him, unimpressed with his dramatics. She'd gotten new glasses, and her dark skin seemed darker with the new frames. He looked down, twisting his fingers, as she waited in the silence for him to stop being evasive, or at least own up to the fact he was nervous. He tried, really, but he felt stuck. She clicked her tongue almost inaudibly, dissatisfied. He swallowed nervously.

'Well,’ she sighed, tersely. ‘If everything’s fine, I guess there’s no need for us to be here—’ She started to close her little binder, and Bucky let her bait him, fell for the obvious trap.

‘OK, so I’m not fine,’ he babbled. 'Obviously, I'm not fine. I am doing better; that's not a lie, I swear, but I'm not fine.' He flapped his hands a little in a panicked, nervous gesture. ‘I quit, OK?’ he snapped, even tho that nagging feeling wasn't even why he'd come in today. ‘I’m a quitter. ‘I’m just—I'm a quitter, and now that’s something I gotta live with every day, too: that I’m a quitter, as well as everything else.’

‘A quitter? Why, what did you quit?’ she asked her paper as she wrote, calm and not affected at all by his fury. He couldn’t believe how strong she was, to have never flinched or wavered when he has come in at his worst. He didn't think he was ever violent, but he was huge and strong and sometimes angry; he almost expected his anger to be interpreted as violent for his size and strength. He used to be angry about everything when he first woke up to avoid feeling sad. He wondered if he was avoiding something by being angry now. He took a moment to breathe and calm. He did not fidget, but he wanted to.

‘I’m not—I’m not really an Avenger, not anymore,’ Bucky said, a little less frantically. ‘I don’t fight anymore. You know that. If I find another HYDRA base in the files—I mean, everything I find now—I’m just passing it along to people I trust. I don't think I could lead a strike again, you know?'

'I’m not involved with this New Avengers’ facility Tony’s built,' Bucky went on. 'He and I have barely talked since Ultron. He was the first person in this century—and we barely talk. Hell, I advised the twins against the facility: told them they didn't have a responsibility to do or be or protect anything because of what had happened to them, especially with the Accords looking like they do. If they wanted to go home or go somewhere new, just live their lives, that was OK.’

‘I just—I had to stop,' Bucky said. 'I had to. I wasn't sleeping, and I don't physically need a lot, so the fact I couldn't manage even two hours a night, for comfort, for _sanity_ , you know? I needed to stop.'

'So why does quitting feel unjustified?' she asked, almost interrupting in that perfect way she did. He thought about it, but he didn't have an answer. It just was. It was simply unjustified; how dare he stop when people might need a shield?

She prodded him: 'You've dismantled HYDRA as a functional organisation. You lead dozens of strikes. You've done far, _far_ more than your draft card could have asked of you. It's long expired. Why should you be obligated to do anything but return to the interests you would have pursued without the war?'

'This isn't even why I came in,' Bucky laughed nervously, leaning forward. 'Jesus.' He rubbed his face. 'Um, fuck. I guess I'm not.' Elizabeth made another note. 'I'm not obligated,' he said out loud, before she could ask him what he wasn't or was.

'So why does quitting feel unjustified?' she asked again. He touched the bow of his lips absently, unsure.

‘Because of Tony,' Bucky said after a long moment. He lowered his hand as to not hide his words. 'I haven’t spoken to him in a while. I've tried calling, but—’ He broke off, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. He doesn't answer, or he does and it's just tense for a few minutes before I hang up.'

'Where does the tenseness come from, on your side of the phone?' Elizabeth asked. Bucky scoffed, not at her, but at the annoyance inside himself.

'I mean, he made a robot that went awry, and I kind of feel like he did it behind my back,' Bucky told her. He sounded a little petulant thru his anger to his own ears, but he couldn't tell if that was self-awareness or self-doubt. He flung his hand again in a pointless gesture; he had nothing useful to articulate. 'Twice. Ultron's been dealt with, and Vision's apparently not a threat, but, like, fuck, man. The fight was supposed to be over. He threw a fucking party where he was like, _woohoo, peacetime!_ and then the gigantic weapon he built behind my back burst in and tried to kill all of our friends.'

'Do you care what his intention was, in building this?' Elizabeth asked as he huffed and tried to calm down. 

'I don't know,' Bucky said simply, shaking his head. He let go of the last bits of anger. 'Certainly not while we're not talking. I don't know.' He made a useless gesture with his hands again. He should have brought his knitting, to give himself a productive way to fidget. Nervously tucking and untucking his hands felt like being too honest with Elizabeth; he was sure she'd read thru angry or nervous knitting just as easily as his fidgeting, but he'd feel better about it. 'People died; does it matter? Does it even matter if I care? People died. There were people I couldn't save.'

'You went thru a lot because of Ultron,' Elizabeth allowed. Bucky wasn't interested in allowing the acknowledgement of that trauma. He wasn't here for that today.

'But then, you know—He's done so much for me, in so many ways. Putting me up, getting my backwages, just being—my fucking friend when I had no one? He's fixed Steve's arm,' Bucky went on. 'Like nobody could've thought. He rebuilt it, made it so functional, beautiful, and then he—God damn it,' Buck cried; he was getting angry again. 'When he finished the arm, he told Steve they weren't friends, that they hadn't been. Called him a brain-damaged moron. He said that to Steve's fucking face, made it seem like the whole friendship was imagined up by Steve 'cause he isn't as good at thinking as he used to be. Steve doubts it now; I know he does. He doubts they were really friends.'

'That's really shitty,' Elizabeth said, validating his anger. 'What did that make you feel?'

'It made me feel—I don't have a word for it; it made me feel awful,' he said. 'When Steve told me what Tony said to him, his voice got so small. It was weeks later, he finally told me; for weeks, I didn't even know, and the look on his face? He gets this sick look on his face when the news says he should pay or be ashamed or scapegoats him; that's a _grin_ compared to how Tony made him feel.'

'You feel tense because you're holding back your need to be protective,' Elizabeth said. That prickled in the best way.

'Yes,' Bucky realised, like a late sunrise. 'Yeah, that's it.'

'You're not used to wanting to lash out at Tony,' Elizabeth said. 'Maybe if you can let go of that urge, you won't be so tense. Maybe you can say something truthful then.'

'Yeah,' he said dimly, wheels turning in his head.

'Trusting Steve to figure out his own fight with Tony leaves you open to figure out yours,' she added.

'Yeah,' he agreed. He sighed. 

'What else are you living with right now?' Elizabeth asked after a silence. 'What's the everything else?'

'I'm sorry?'

'When you said you thought you were a quitter,' she explained, without referencing her damnable notes, 'you said, "now that’s something I gotta live with every day, too: that I’m a quitter, as well as everything else." What's the everything else?'

'Did you just quote me verbatim?' he asked her. She sighed, grabbing one wheel and pivoting her chair forty-degrees. She grabbed, from the low bookshelf along the wall that served as her office's coffee table, her travel thermos. He'd seen her refill it with hot water before, but he'd never seen her replace the tea bag hanging out of it. She must do.

Elizabeth took a deep sip and put the thermos back. 'Don't avoid the question,' she said. 

'It's mostly stuff we've talked about, some stuff I'm not ready or not gonna talk about,' Bucky said. She faced him again and tilted her head, daring. He shook his head _no_. 'I haven't decided if it's something I even need to talk about. And the rest is just—I mean, they got that photo from before the last couple times we've talked. And you know what Nat did and how I've been handling it.'

'You think the non-disclosure around the photo is going to make people dig in the online archives?' Elizabeth connected. He nodded. There was a fury of renewed interest in him ever since the photo; he didn't understand how he could go months immediately after Ultron without seeing journalists or paparazzi and now there was someone everywhere he went. Of course, they were looking in the archives for things to ask him about; they'd find the tapes SHIELD had from Nat's visits. 

'Yeah, but it's nothing I can—There's nothing to do to prevent it, so you know. No sense worrying about it, I guess,' Bucky said. 'I just gotta, you know, stop worrying about it now that I've decided not to worry about it.'

'Yeah. So why did you come in today?' Elizabeth asked, moving them on. 'If it wasn't to talk about quitting, Tony, or the everything else?'

'Oh, I had this nightmare that scared the shit out of me,' Bucky confessed. 'It was, like, a week and a half ago and I'm still bothered. Unsettled. I was gonna just wait—you know, we have another appointment in about a week, but I feel like I'm going out of my skin.'

'You don't need to apologise for needing to see me,' she said, even tho he hadn't quite. She knew he was within an inch of apologising for bothering her at all. 'Tell me about it.'  

'I don't know. It was sunny,' he said lamely.

'It was like I was trapped in front of this aquarium wall, and Steve was behind it with these fish; he was drawing them but he couldn't hear me because of the glass, even tho the glass wasn't real. He couldn't hear me no matter how I shouted for him,' Bucky said. Steve had been in the scrubs he'd worn in deprogramming. He'd been sitting on a wooden chair, too prim, like a mechanised version of himself. The fish had swum and drifted around him like a sick version of butterflies and Steve sketched them on dry paper as if he were a marionette for the water, as if this all made sense. HIs hair had drifted in the current like flaxen silk. Bucky had shouted for Steve until the sun, far above at the surface of the impossible water, had shattered and fallen like glass thru the air. 'And then the dream changed and we were outside, and I could hear him talking from somewhere else, but he was dead.'

'The dream made it seem like Steve had drowned? That's unusual,' she said, because, yes, usually his nightmares were about drowning and usually Bucky was the one drowning.

'No, the water disappeared,' Bucky said. He knew it didn't make any sense. 'Steve wasn't drowning.' Elizabeth blinked, thinking. 

'What was he saying from far away?' Elizabeth asked. He shook his head.

'I don't know, um; he was saying the sort of thing he says when he wakes up confused from his nightmares,' Bucky said, trying to think of anything specific. Steve had been gone, just gone. His drifting voice had spoken like he did when his nightmares left him confused and half-awake. 'That's fine; it was just weird dream stuff. What fucked me up was—Fuck, after the dream changed, there was grass under us and the aquarium glass was falling and the water was gone. But Steve was—the voice was far away and there was a version of Steve—Well, he was straddling my hips; he was real close, but he was a dead body. He was foul and awful and animated; he held my arms the way Steve does when he sits like that. His fucking corpse was on top of me, and when I tried to touch him, my hands sunk into him like he'd been left in a shallow grave in the sand fields. My hand sank into this grey flesh and it made him start to cough like that time he had pertussis, and he was dead, just rotting and blowing away in the wind.'

'That sounds horrifying,' Elizabeth tried.

'It made me sick, like physically; it made me throw up, and it has since. I couldn't stop him from blowing away and now I keep closing my eyes to go to sleep at night and I get this vivid sight, this vision, of his rotting face,' Bucky explained. 'I jerk up, and he's right there every time; he's obviously fine, but I get so scared. It's like I keep waking up from the dream, even tho I know I'm not—It's not like when Steve gets confused about being awake or not; it just keeps happening, is all. I know I'm awake but it's like the dream is new all over. I need some advice about how to stop that, you know, how to get the image of his face like that out of my head so I can sleep.'

'Firstly, take a deep breath,' she said. He did, and filling his chest with air made him realise how stiff he was. He was so tense his shoulders hurt; he leaned back into her couch and covered his face for a moment. He relaxed. He breathed again, focusing on how his breath shook a little on its way out. 'I know it's a bit silly,' she said calmly as he breathed, 'but can you say out loud for me: _I am not a widower_?'

'I'm not a widower,' he agreed. He opened his eyes. He didn't let his shoulders tense back up; the nightmare was just that, a bad dream. It was a week and a half old; Bucky had to get over it.

'You know this; you know how you hold on to things, especially things that meant a lot,' Elizabeth said. 'Steve has always meant a lot to you, so of course his death, supposed as it was, did too. But. It just wasn't real; let go of it.'

'Now, secondly,' she said.

'Thirdly,' he said, unable to help himself. 'First thing was _breathe_ ; second thing was _I am not a widow_.'

'Fine, third,' she said. 'Let go of your protectiveness, just a little. Steve's doing well, painting lots, you say. You're doing better, even if you're not perfect; nobody is. HYDRA is gone; you've retired from active combat. It's not your job to protect everyone. It's not a duty you're reneging; you've more than done your part. You're a civilian now. Why aren't you leading a civilian life? I'm a civilian. I think about my partner all the time, but I haven't wondered about his personal and bodily security today. Have you?'

'Have I wondered about Paul—? Oh,' he said, understanding halfway thru being confused. 'Um, yeah. I'm worried. I'm not—I'm not obsessing, you know, but yes, I've wondered if—Yeah, I'm worried right now, even tho he's probably just chilling at home.'

'You can't be worried constantly that something will happen,' Elizabeth said. 'You can't keep living in crisis mode. You're burning out.'

'Yeah,' he said, even if he didn't know if he were in crisis mode. He worried a lot, yes, but he also had lazy afternoons knitting in the sun and ambitious early mornings with Sam when he laughed so hard he had to stop running. He had great days. He also had nights when he was too keyed up to even try to sleep, or days when washing dishes in front of the window made him terrified of snipers, or when Steve was quieter than usual and his bad day made Bucky feel like he were being slowly crushed.

'Fourth, and finally: when you're going to sleep and you see his face, keep your eyes closed,' Elizabeth ordered.

'I can't!' Bucky snapped. What a crazy fucking idea! 'Oh, my God, Elizabeth, you have no idea—He's dead; he's fucking dead and I can see him—I can practically _smell_ him rotting—'

'He's _not dead_!' Elizabeth interrupted. His teeth clicked shut. 'Bucky!' she cried, almost laughing at how shocked he must look. She rolled and leaned forward enough to jostle his knee, exasperated. 'He's not dead; you know that! He's alive in the bed next to you; you know that he's alive! He's not dead. What are you checking for?' He shrugged. He didn't know. He had to check; he had to be sure.

'Why are you doubting yourself?' she asked softly. His hands were shaking. She didn't make a note of it; she stared openly and waited, listening. He shook his head, searching for words that could possibly explain—

'I saw him fall,' Bucky whispered, begging her to understand. 'I saw the gamma gun fire, you know; it hit him. He should've been gone right then, but he had my shield. He covered me with _my_ shield and went flying and then he held on. He held on and I let him fall. I let him fall. I _felt_ him die, you know? I just—'

'Close your eyes,' she said. He stared at her for a moment, but then he did. He closed his eyes. She took her hand from his knee, leaving him alone in his head. He forced himself to lean his head into the high, soft back of her couch. 'When you're trying to sleep and this nightmare comes back, keep control. Keep your eyes closed.' Bucky had to struggle to stay calm and eyes-closed at just the thought of the nightmare; he didn't understand how he'd be able to do it at night.

'You know Steve's not dead. Don't check that he's all right; don't give the nightmare the power to make you do anything.' Bucky's eyes snapped open, shocked by that turn of phrase. Steve said exactly that all the time, that no one had the power to make him do anything anymore; he would brag about it when he was feeling contrary and wanted get on Bucky's nerves without starting a fight. Bucky would start listing pretend things people couldn't make Steve do. Steve would list things back until he felt less contrary or until he promised he'd do anything for Bucky, to solicit affection and pleasure. Elizabeth was right; fear was as strong of a tool as Steve's programme had been and Bucky had to get over his. Elizabeth didn't tell him to close his eyes again or pause. ' _He's alive_ ,' she said instead, firmly. 'You know he's alive. Tell the nightmare that, and eventually, that piece of your subconscious that is still mourning is gonna get the message.'

'He's been back for two years,' Bucky snapped. 'How have I not gotten the message—'

'Because you let the nightmare make you check,' Elizabeth said. 'It's been two years, yeah, but he was in hospital for about ten months of that time. You check his pulse when he's sleeping. You still say things like _I could smell his dead body_ instead of saying _I dreamt this really fucked-up thing; I'm blessed it's not real._ '

'Fuck,' Bucky said, inarticulate. 'OK.'

'Close your eyes,' she said quietly, and he did. 'You're not a widower. You have control of the nightmare; you don't need to be in crisis mode. Breathe.' He huffed. 'No, breathe; relax; come on.' He took a slow, intentional breath. Keeping the thought in his mind— _Steve is alive_ —kept him calm, or at least calmer. He could smell rotting flesh and feel the east wind on the back of his neck, the one that had carried the dust of Steve's body away. It didn't matter. It had been a dream and Bucky was bigger than it.

'That's plenty for today,' she said. 'I'll see you at our usual appointment next week.'

'Great,' Bucky said. He felt like he'd been pressed thru a pasta maker. 'I can't wait for it.'

'Your sarcasm, as always, is welcomed,' Elizabeth said. 'Go on now; get out of here.'

'Can I take a cookie on my way out?' he asked, pointing vaguely at the jar on the shelf as well, between her constant source of tea and a photo of her and two other women in matching gowns at a graduation.

'Yeah,' she agreed. 'You earned it.'

^^^

Bucky realised he didn't have his cellphone when he was five stops away on the city bus. He got off at the sixth stop to walk back and get it; what good was being the boss if he couldn't come in late? He bought breakfast since he was out, figuring he had to make his half-commute worthwhile. He bought some arepas and black coffees from a Venezuelan café near their street. He sipped his coffee on his way back. It was a nice day; the winter's chill was fading out of the spring.

He paused on the doorstep of their building to juggle the two coffees and a paper bag; Missus Ouli from upstairs saved him from having to juggle enough to find his keys. She pushed the door ajar and he held it open for her with an elbow.

'You didn't bring me a cup?' she joked as she made her way down the few steps to the sidewalk.

'I did not,' he said. 'I'm afraid someone else is the object of my affections today.' He watched her humped back move past him down the stairs; he resisted the urge to hold his arms out as if to catch her should she fall down the steps, but for all her frailty, she moved with confidence.

'I see how it is, Bucky Barnes!' she crowed. 'I give you recipe after recipe and I'm only ever repaid with your bakings, never coffee!'

'Oh, I'll bring you a nice dark roast next time,' he promised, and she cackled as her two canes began their beat down the sidewalk. 'Have a great day, Missus Ouli!' He made his way into the building and up the stairs. He did have to juggle the cups and his bag a little before he could pull his keys from his jacket.

'Hey,' he called as he shouldered their door open. 'I left my phone, so I brought some breakfast back.' He kicked off his shoes. 'Steve?' he tried again, wondering if Steve had made a rare excursion out by himself.

'I'm in the living room,' Steve called back. 'I've got your phone.' He didn't sound like himself; Bucky frowned as he crossed thru the kitchen.

'What's wrong?' Bucky asked, placing the bag of arepas down on the dining room table. His phone sat on the arm of the loveseat Steve had curled up in. He wanted to cross to him, settle on the other arm of the seat. Something in the air held him back.

'You got a call while you were out,' Steve said quietly. Bucky waited for a tense moment before he simply felt he had to press. He could feel disaster in the air and Steve had told him nothing yet.

'So what's wrong?' Bucky repeated. Steve sniffed wetly; Bucky didn't call him out for crying. Steve swiped at his nose. He wouldn't look Bucky in the eye. 'Stevie?'

'It was Suzanne,' Steve said, 'letting us know that Peggy died in her sleep last night.'

Bucky felt a harsh cold chill slide under his skin, awful and creeping, like a storm front or like fear. It was bereavement, abandonment, shattered hearts and unfathomable windchills.

'What?' Bucky echoed, even if he'd heard those words more clearly than he'd heard anything in years.

  
'Peggy died in her sleep last night,' Steve repeated. Bucky wondered stupidly, instead of understanding properly, if this is what it had felt like when she or Steve would go from lucid to confused in the blink of an eye, like reality shattered like a glass window and suddenly all the air were gone. He felt like the pieces of the world itself were lying on the ground, absorbing instead of reflecting colour. It felt like the first seconds in the rebirth tube. He felt breathless. He could feel something warm in his cold, cold hands. He looked down. He was still holding the coffees. _I should put these down_ , he thought.  

'Suzanne says she didn't suffer, just—drifted off,' Steve added, voice cracking. Bucky swallowed around the freezing, awful sharpstone in his throat; he felt like his sternum was creaking and his heart was breaking. Peggy didn't suffer. She just died. She was gone; she couldn't suffer anymore. Bucky didn't know if he believed she was anything anymore. He didn't know if she was disappeared by entropy or if she'd left them for something better. He wished he knew; why hadn't he thought to decide? He'd thought he was ready; he thought he had begun to say his goodbyes.

'I wanted her to go in her sleep,' Steve confessed. Maybe she was resting, Bucky thought, like death was a little like the ice had been, just a break, a stoppage, before something unimaginable. 'Peacefully. It's why I've been spending so many afternoons—I was gonna go today.' Bucky swore he could feel shards, glass, carving him up inside. 'I was gonna go today,' Steve said dimly. 'I thought we had more time.'

Bucky tried to say something, but he couldn't. He didn't even have tears; his eyes were burning but he couldn't even manage tears. He'd known they were running out of time. He'd known it would be a relief for Peggy, not to be confused and in pain anymore, but Jesus, it was really over now.

'I texted Nadine from your phone,' Steve added of Nadine, Bucky's office manager, 'and told her told her to send you home or to not expect you.' It was unbelievably prescient of Steve to let her know.

'Jesus Christ,' Bucky whispered, and forcing a word past his ragged throat felt sharp enough to let him cry. It was really over; they were really in the future and anyone who'd known them in real life was gone. He was never going home—It was over; there was nothing of _home_ left for them here and Peggy was gone. He tried to think of what they should do; he should bring Suzanne food, ask when her sister was flying in, what he could do. He tried to think but he was crying; he couldn't. He sank into a dining room chair because it felt like his knees had lost the ability to support any weight other than the burden of the words _Peggy died_. The legs clacked against the flooring; he'd practically collapsed into it.

'Oh, Bucky, baby.' His eyes were blurring with tears; he could barely see as Steve rushed up, taking the two papers cups from Bucky. He reached blindly almost before Steve had the hot liquid away. 'Oh, baby, it's OK; let it out.' He hugged his arms around Steve's middle, and Steve pressed into the V of his legs. He stroked over Bucky's hair, holding his shoulders tight with the other arm. Peggy had told him he needed a haircut last time he saw her, but last time he saw her, she'd mistaken him for her husband and tried to tell him about the week he missed with the kids. She hadn't even been able to keep the week together, told him again and again about Tuesday and Wednesday night while he held her hand in his. They used to knit together when he first came back and now she could barely keep a grip.

Steve's hand fell on the back of Bucky's neck as Bucky sobbed into Steve's shirt. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, but we're gonna get thru this. Right?' Steve added. 'We have to.' Steve's thumb stroked soothingly where he held Bucky. 'Eventually. Right?' Steve's voice was wet too.

'We'll get thru this,' Steve said again. 'We have to.'

  
^^^

The day of the funeral felt like it was filled with white noise. Bucky heard nothing but as he brushed his teeth and as he stood in front Steve, tying his tie for him because his flesh hand was too unsteadied by the stress of the day. Bucky wondered if Steve were in pain, actual physical pain, not only falling apart with grief like Bucky, at the seams and frayed. Steve usually smiled patiently up at him when Bucky tied his ties for him, but today he stared blankly ahead, present but listless with sadness. The first two days they were truly alone in the word had felt like that to Bucky: listlessly sad, empty.

They got ready to go in near-silence. Bucky made coffee he forgot to drink and he couldn't bear to reheat it, for some reason, when it had grown cold. They left their apartment.

'Sweet Jesus,' Bucky cursed, touching Steve's elbow to stop him next to the mailboxes in their building's little lobby. He snatched his hand back, too wary of the reporters beyond the foyer doors to keep reaching for Steve. He nervously adjusted his grip on the string around the two boxes of baked goods he had made, was nervously bringing to lay out before the service. He felt useless and anxious and numb all at once. He felt like he was almost going to be sick. Steve shot him a questioning glance, coming back from his thoughts, and Bucky nodded at the door. 'Look at all the fucking cameras.' Steve looked outside and he set his jaw as he turned away too, turning his back to the windows.

'They should have some respect,' Steve snapped, after a tense moment. He tugged at his black jacket nervously, over a black shirt and black tie. It made him look too small, Bucky thought; it made him look like the tiny soldier who had swum in his uniforms. Maybe it was fitting that that was what Bucky was reminded of by these funeral blacks. A little guy with a big grin, big nose, and too big clothes was exactly who Pegs had fallen in love with, after all; he'd seen the way she looked at him. Steve wasn't grinning today; he was fresh from crying and inches from crying again.

'It's her damn _funeral_ today,' Steve added, a little furiously, and Bucky watched him blink tears out of his eyes. Steve rarely got angry like this now, for all it got him into fights every other day before the war. It had always been rare to see him cry. 'Not a single one of the questions is gonna be about her; they don't have any God damned respect.'

'They might not even know this day is about her, for Christ's sake,' Bucky agreed, thinking of how the docent at the Smithsonian had said they'd always seen M Carter but never assumed Bucky's reports were prepared for and signed off by a Margaret. 'I figured they'd be looking in the SHIELD dump for clues now, after the photo.'

'How _dare_ they,' Steve said again, stuck in his rage to avoid his grief, when it had been so unavoidable, when she'd been so old, and so tired. 'Today of all days.'

'Don't let them know how much—We just have to make it to the car,' Bucky said, begging them to hide themselves from the cameras. 'Nat's outside—'

'Nat came?' Steve asked. He swiped his eyes dry and drew himself into composure.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed, doing the same.

'Fuck, she's a good friend,' Steve sighed. Bucky could read the tension on him easily, but he let his anger hide behind a passive face. 'OK. Let's—let's face the music. Do you want me to take the box?' he asked, like he would in airport security and boarding lines when Bucky couldn't calm without his hands free.  

'No,' Bucky said. 'Thanks, but I—Thanks.' He wished he were brave enough to take Steve's hand, let Steve hold him together as he pushed them out of their building and towards the waiting crowd. Instead, he held the door behind him and squinted, his eyes too-sensitive against the flashes of big cameras.

'Are you and the Winter Soldier currently engaged in an inappropriate relationship?' someone shouted as Bucky stepped into the fresh air. Any other day, Bucky might have worried Steve would stop to comment because of a baiting question like that, unable to let someone call relationships like the one they weren't disclosing inappropriate. Any other day, Bucky would be able to feel the glare Steve held back because he hated when the news had photos of him looking angry. Today, Steve stayed close and quiet.

'Are you gay?'

'The recordings claim you two were engaged in a relationship—' Bucky realized what they had found, on today of all days. They had found the recordings after all; he was out and he didn't even have a neurone to spare to consider it. He put a hand in front of his face, trying to keep any photos from being terribly useful. He held his boxes close to himself, like the reporters were crowding more than they actually were. He also froze on their building's stoop, because he couldn't handle this today. He didn't know what to do with a crowd shouting questions.

Steve stepped up, moving down the stairs in front of Bucky. 'Excuse us, please,' he said firmly enough to be heard, stepping into the sidewalk and making space for Bucky to follow him to the curb. 'We're on our way to a funeral.'

'Is it true that you live with the Winter Soldier for our security, or is it true, what the recordings say?'

'Is that really you on the tapes?'

'Aren't you a role model for children?!' Bucky saw Steve's head snap over in the direction the question was coming from, but he didn't say anything; he kept a level head while Bucky felt like he was falling apart.

'Neither of us is answering questions today; excuse me,' Steve said simply.

'Why did you wait so long to come out?'

'Are you coming out now?!'  


'We're on the way to a funeral of a—a close friend,' Steve said again. For all people were asking them questions, it felt like no one heard him. The back door to Nat's car opened, pushed from the inside, pushing back a few reporters in the tight space of the sidewalk. Steve reached out, grabbing the edge of the door and guiding Bucky into the car.

Steve pressed in behind him, for all the reporters made no effort to rush the car or the open space of the door. Bucky slid across the bench seat and Steve folded himself into the car. He shut the door, closing out the sound. Bucky watched him stop schooling his face, watched him slouch down and let his angry scowl come out. Bucky wondered what his face looked like, if he looked stricken or sick. He was on his way to Peggy's funeral and he'd just been outed to the world; he didn't know what his face looked like. He didn't know what he was feeling. He'd started the day so sad he felt empty. Now he felt numb. He felt overwhelmed. There was too much happening; he just wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and the last person from their time was dead.

'Thanks, Sam, for the door,' Bucky said dimly. 'And for picking us up, Nat. It means a lot, you know, you flying in.'

'Of course,' she murmured, as she reentered traffic. 'Didn't want you boys to be alone today.' Steve took his hand, and Bucky looked down at their fingers. He wondered how well Steve felt he was holding himself together; Bucky felt like he was shattering and he hadn't had to relearn how to think and feel after decades of torture under HYDRA. 'Why so many reporters?' Nat asked. 'I didn't think Carter was a household name.'

'It's not about Peggy. They found the recordings from before I came back,' Steve said tactfully. Bucky heard Nat's teeth snick together as she shut her mouth, surprised. 'Sorry,' Steve added. He must have heard it too. There was a half-second, if that, of brief, tense silence.

'It's fine,' Nat said, and it sounded perfectly so. 'I'm the one who's—Well, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter today.'

'It means a lot that you came,' Bucky said again. It, like everything else today, would be insufficient comfort. Not even Steve's hand in his felt like the tether to good things it usually was; it felt like a reminder of everything they'd never have. Bucky remembered the nightmares he'd had after Ultron, the visions Wanda had given him of the family he and Peggy and Steve might have shared, given a chance to form a place together in the world. He could feel the void of their possibility against every finger of Steve's right now.

Bucky ended up sitting next to Peggy's niece at the funeral, who gave him a tight-lipped but sincere smile. He supposed there was the possibility that Sharon was Peggy's great-niece, actually, but he wasn't sure and it didn't really matter. He understood she worked for the CIA now; he saw her sometimes when the office he ran had summaries to distribute to agencies like hers. She gave him a kind smile as they settled in the third row, with Steve sitting next to Bucky on the aisle side.

'Suzanne asked when she called if one of us would talk,' Steve said quietly. Bucky looked over, surprised. 'We should say something. I know you don't—aren't—I'll say something.' Bucky stared at Steve, at his rueful, sad smile, and nodded gratefully. He liked that, actually: Steve saying _we_ and doing something for them. Steve standing up meant Bucky had too, even if he couldn't possibly say a word without sobbing. Steve opened the paper programme he held and frowned at it. 'Um,' he said after a second. 'I can't—Will you?'

'They said I should go up after the Psalm twenty-five. Will you make sure I go at the right—' Bucky nodded, taking the paper Steve pressed into his hands. He felt strangely comforted by that, somehow; he couldn't speak in front of the reporters today, or the congregation of Peggy's most beloved peoples, but Steve was too stressed for his brain to let him read. They matched each other. They'd survive this, even if Bucky felt like he was bleeding out onto the church's marble floor.

It was strangely familiar to Bucky, sitting in a Catholic mass. He'd only been to a handful of Catholic funerals, and Missus Rogers's, before the war. He'd been to church less at all, since waking up. As the prayer service actually started, Bucky found himself staring at the stained glass to avoid looking at the pulpit of the covered casket. He was half-listening to the readings he'd expected, the ones he had known Suzanne and her sister would choose.

'Relieve the troubles of my heart; and bring me out of my distress,' they sang, when Psalm twenty-five came up. 'Put an end to my affliction and my suffering; and take away all my sins. To you, oh, Lord, I lift my soul.'

As the choir joined the congregation and led the refrain, Bucky leaned over to Steve. 'It's you after this,' he said quietly. Steve nodded and pushed his hair behind his ears.

'Preserve my life and rescue me,' sang the people around them. Steve held his hand for a brief moment, gathering his strength. 'Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, because I wait for you, oh, Lord.' Suzanne introduced him, and Steve went up to the pulpit.

'I want to thank Peggy's family for letting me speak,' Steve said first. 'There are a lot of people here and I have to imagine some of you don't feel very positively about me, so.' Bucky watched him nervously heave a breath. 'Peggy was important to me; this means a lot, really, to be able to speak here today.'

'Bucky and I met Peggy in New Jersey,' Steve began, 'at Camp Lehigh.' Bucky frowned. Steve had met Peggy in Europe, after Bucky had been transformed. 'And the first time I saw her, she punched some green private in the face for mouthing off. He called her Queen Victoria and she dropped him like a bag of hammers.' Steve smiled, dimly and wistful.  'I thought she was the greatest woman I'd ever seen.'

'I didn't stay at Camp Lehigh with her for long, but when I left, she was the one to drive to another site and I found out on the drive there that I could make her laugh,' Steve said, even if it made no sense to Bucky. 'It's a gift, Peggy's laugh, isn't it?' he said, asking the crowd generally. Bucky heard some people murmur to their neighbours in agreement, little pleasant memories floating up all over the church; Peggy had had a great laugh. Bucky could hear it in his head now, the small giggle when she was pleased and the guffaws when you'd tickled her that almost seemed to take even her by surprise.

'It was a gift,' Steve corrected gently after a second, like he'd realised. 'You know, during the war, I wanted to hear it every day, but I barely got to see her smile because of the fighting; I got to see her razor sharp and angry instead and I still—God, how did anyone avoid falling in love with her? At least a little?' Steve shook his head. 'She was—I mean. She had that laugh, and she would have these wickedly clever, rude little jokes.'

'When I became a medic, she would visit me on the front, when her orders took her close enough, and even then she could make me smile, laugh. I got to see her three times before—before my unit was captured. I don't think the brass told her division my unit was gone until we'd been there for months. And after—well, after, I had trouble with a lot of things. But Peggy could still make me laugh. We still fit. I felt like the world was a lot darker after Azzano, but the bright spot she was didn't change. You don't get a lot of people like Peggy in your life.'

'And she had to survive losing me, and losing Bucky, a few days apart, a few weeks before Europe was settled. I don't know how she was so strong; I don't know if I could've gotten thru that, losing people like that. She just kept fighting until the war was won, and then kept fighting afterwards too. She turned the SSR into SHIELD in a time when most of the men we worked with overlooked her. She built something for herself, and then she built a family and a home besides.' Steve looked down, faking composure. 'I'm really proud of that,' he said, firm and too honest, 'the family she made. I know it's not mine; I don't got a real reason to be, but I am. She built something beautiful.' There was a silent moment then, brief.

'When I came back, after—' Steve hesitated, chewing his lower lip for a second. 'Well, after,' he said again, trying to gloss over himself. 'So much time had gone by that the Peggy I knew was gone. The Steve she knew was gone too. We were both—' He almost huffed a laugh, that dim amusement one only felt when remembering the best moments with a lost one.'We both forgot things, remembered things, from one moment to the next,' Steve told the congregation. 'We had good days and bad days, mostly at the same time; we still fit each other. When we had good days together, we could still make each other laugh. I could make her laugh even when she didn't know me. We still matched.'

'I was lucky, I guess. I got to get better. I wish so badly she could've gotten better too,' Steve admitted. 'I wish she could have had more time, like I got more time.'

'I remember things really well these days,' Steve said, even if Bucky knew he was scatterbrained at the best of times and couldn't handle the DC public transit without Sam or Bucky to help him, or errands without a meticulous list. 'I remember her smiles, and the stories about her kids. I hope I never forget a moment I got to spend with her. I wish there had been a hundred more years I could have had with her. I wish she could've gotten better too.'

  
'I'll miss her,' Steve said after a long while. 'I don't think I'll ever stop.'


	3. Chapter 3

'Hey,' someone said. Bucky looked up, then ducked his head again. It was Tony, and Bucky was crying. He took the time to wipe below his eyes, handkerchief and all. He'd left the reception to hide in the service stairwell because it was all too much, even nearly wound down and over. He had come here to be alone with his tears, but he didn't mind Tony's intrusion. He hadn't seen Tony in a couple of months. He hadn't been at the church service itself, but neither had a lot of the people who had come to the larger reception.

'Hey, Tony,' Bucky croaked back.

'I, uh,' Tony said. He cleared his throat, even if his voice sounded perfectly smooth next to Bucky's. 'I was really sorry to hear about Aunt Peggy.'

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. He tried to go on, but his voice went so rough it died. There wasn't a world in which he could do a damn thing to change that. Peggy was dead and Bucky had foolishly thought he'd even at least begun his goodbyes. He couldn't believe she was gone, that that place in the world was really behind him. Home was gone and anything he'd wanted before couldn't be. He coughed, trying to expel the tearing grief from below his sternum.

'Yeah, you know,' Bucky forced out. 'You know, she was the last part of our life before that was still here. She was the only person alive who had known us then too.'

'I can't imagine,' Tony said. Bucky wiped his face again, with the other side of his kerchief fold. He felt disgusting, like he'd been crying for so long his skin was wax and sinew.

'Do you mind if I—?' Tony asked, gesturing to the wide stairs next to Bucky. Bucky moved over to make welcome, closer to the wall than the open space below the ninth step. Tony settled next to him but a step-down. Tony leant back onto the stair above himself, one elbow on the run, linking his fingers over his fine, charcoal suit coat.

'Aunt Peggy?' Bucky questioned finally. Tony hadn't called her that before, but they hadn't really talked about her. Bucky hadn't known to ask about it to Peggy. Now it was another thing that couldn't be, now; Bucky could hear Tony's stories, but he'd never hear Peggy's side; he'd never hear her version of Nephew Tony, like he'd lost for real all those moments in the war, all those vague promises they'd made, too afraid to make real plans lest God laugh. He had, all the same. Even if she were still alive, she might have already lost the memories to the ravages of time. Those stories were gone, vanished, a sickening abyss.

'She, uh, she was friends with my father,' Tony said, as if Bucky hadn't known that. 'Saw her about as much as I saw my dad. I mostly stopped calling her Aunt Peggy when I started university, but, you know. Once a family friend.'

'Once, actually, when I'd just started at MIT,' Tony said, and Bucky looked at him, listening intently. Tony found he was the one who had to look away. 'I, uh. I was a kid, for all I was good enough to build the things and keep up. I was smart enough, but that didn't mean I was ready.'

'Yeah,' Bucky murmured, wishing so badly he'd survived the war somehow, that he'd been Uncle Bucky to Tony instead of whatever he was now, when they were friends with a tense something between them. He hadn't realised it until then, but if the world had been perfect, Bucky would have seen Tony as often as Peggy had growing up. He'd have been Uncle Bucky and Howard wouldn't have spent half of Tony's childhood looking for some dead asshole in the Arctic and the other secretly torturing Steve. Things would have been so different. Bucky might have children here at the funeral today; Suzanne might have been his daughter. He would have been really ninety-nine, not a man who still looked about twenty-something and was starting to fret that he might not be ageing at all. Tony went on.

'I was feeling totally overwhelmed,' he admitted. 'I left campus one Friday, took an early train. I went to visit my dad, and she was in his office but he wasn't.' Bucky realised Tony was older too; he had more dignified grey at his temples, and the lines around his eyes had deepened. Peggy's funeral had already put a deep chill into his marrow, but now Bucky couldn't imagine it'd ever warm up.

'I asked after my dad, and I planned to just go find him, but I ended up telling her how school was going instead,' Tony went on, unaware that Bucky had scared himself very badly. 'I told her that I'd taken too much on, that I wasn't as good as the other students even tho I was smarter than some of them. They were grown-ups; they could juggle classes and alcohol and dorms and everything. I couldn't. She told me I had absolutely bitten off more than I could chew, but that I shouldn't sweat it.' Bucky looked over at Tony's profile. He could almost hear her voice.

'Why not?' he asked.

''Cause I'd made it that far in life without choking,' Tony said matter of factly, 'and that success is judged by the plate, not by bites.'

'She just told me to keep chewing,' Tony finished. 'That I'd get there. It was good advice.'

'She used to grind and grind and grind,' Bucky told Tony. 'Didn't matter how many times the brass told her no; she would find a way to get the stamp she needed, or get us the equipment we needed or the information we wanted.'

'She was like that while you were gone too,' Tony promised him. Bucky felt one chuckle break loose from his heavy chest.

'Yeah, I figured,' Bucky said. 'She was something else, man. There's never gonna—I mean, she was something else.' Tony hummed his agreement and they sat in an almost comfortable silence for a long time.

'And about the recordings,' Tony added. For a second, Bucky didn't know what he meant, and then he remembered the reporters outside his apartment building. He'd completely forgotten. 'That's rough, man. Pepper told me you guys weren't saying anything about the picture, and now this.' He shook his head.

'Yeah,' Bucky said, feeling less distressed about it than he thought he would. He didn't feel so frantic with grief as he had that morning; he had room to worry about it if he wanted to. He didn't feel worried, about what people would say, or about people asking him questions he didn't know how to answer. He'd go home and nothing anyone asked him would change the reality of what he was going home to: Steve painting, maybe listening to the radio, waiting for Bucky. 'I don't know if I'm lucky or cursed that it happened on a day I don't care.'

'I'm sorry anyway, about that, about Peggy,' Tony said.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'Thanks, man.' He patted Tony's shoulder for a second before pulling away. Tony didn't tense like he had in that hospital hallway, about to step up for Steve but unable to even look Bucky in the eye.

Bucky added: 'You've been avoiding me for a while. Your friend, Steve, too.' Tony rubbed the back of his neck. 'Sorry, but not bringing it up is bringing it up, you know? I'm not gonna mention him cause he already left with Sam?' He shrugged, regretful.

'No, I know,' Tony sighed, rubbing his face suddenly. 'I know, OK? I shouldn't have said—He just—' Tony shook his head. 'He got under my skin. I was meaner than I needed to be, but I was pissed. I love him, but he pisses me off sometimes. I got wound up.'

'I know there's more to it than he's told me, so I'm trying to stay out of it, you know? You shouldn't even tell me; it's between you and him,' Bucky said, prefacing his unsolicited advice with unsolicited caveats. 'But you gotta do something about it, because you can lose people before you know it. Even when you can see it coming. I still feel like Peggy's vanished. I wasted so much time with her being too afraid to ask things.'

'Do you know how much I could've asked her if I hadn't been such a coward?' Bucky asked. 'If I'd been brave, and done the thing anyway? If I'd faced the fear, or if I'd at least worked thru it so I could do the thing? I'd have so much more of her now that she's gone.' He shook his head. He wished he knew all of her stories, all of the best memories, and all of the worst heartbreaks.

'I wish I'd done more,' Bucky said. 'You're gonna end up wishing you'd done more, too, if you lose Pepper for good. If you lose Steve. But if you sort out your own bad feelings, you'd be surprised how much easier it is to be with people. Even fighting with them is easier.'

Bucky used to taint every good thing and make worse every bad thing he and Steve shared because he couldn't cope with the nasty certainty that what he felt was love was in fact perversion, sinful and dirty. He couldn't let go of the certainty that his queerness damned him in the eyes of God; he'd known he was going to suffer for every piece of pleasure Steve came him.

He had sorted thru that when he thought Steve was dead; he had had to, because the alternative was to continue living his life believing Steve had been damned for loving as sweetly as he did. He would have had to have lived with the certainty that Steve wasn't in Hell, and he couldn't be. Bucky hadn't been able to reconcile the certainty of his own sin that he had carried for so long, with the equal certainty that Steve who had been an activist and a devout believer and a medic and who Bucky had thought died trying to cover him, who even today picked up bits of litter off the streets, deserved eternal salvation. He couldn't live his life believing Steve was in Hell; he had had to work thru it and rebalance his faith. Bucky didn't have those bad feelings anymore and some of the things he shared with Steve today were exactly the same as the things they used to share, and they were profoundly deeper without his corrupting fears. Even now, when Bucky had only vented his anger about Ultron, not sorted it out or gotten over it, it was so much easier to sit next to Tony than talking on the phone had been. It was easier.

'You're smart,' Tony said softly. Bucky huffed a sad laugh.

'I'm an expert in loss is all,' Bucky said. 'Besides, getting over your own baggage before dealing with the problem itself? It's easier said than done. That being said, you know—'

'That's a great pun,' Tony put in to mock him.

'—shut up—'

'It was.'

'—I did do it,' Bucky told him, meeting his eye. He shrugged. Tony blinked like didn't know what to say. Bucky went on: 'I mean, I'm still doing it, you know, I don't think I'm gonna ever be—I'm not gonna really get over everything I've been thru.' Tony's expression shifted, surprised. Bucky gave him another shrug.

'It was fucked up,' he laughed, like he'd break if he didn't let the tension out somehow, 'all the things we saw, what the Nazis did in the countrysides, in the camps. What HYDRA did to the people they took, their prisoners, in places like Azzano, or the villages Hitler gave them in Belarus. Some of the stuff we did, too.' Bucky shook his head. 'I mean, you've killed people, as we've taken down HYDRA. It's gotta weigh on you the same as it always weighs on me, and I'm the one giving the orders, so it's all on me, you know? Everyone you take down, every civilian who gets hurt, every mistake somebody makes: it's mine too. And if one of my guys gets killed—I mean, it's attrition and chaos, of course—but it's also because I told them to stand there, 'cause I sent them—sent them to get killed.'

'I don't think I'm gonna be—it's not about getting back in the field, or moving on,' Bucky said. 'It's not about getting to fight again. I'll never be able to go back to that now. I'm just trying to hurt a little less.'

'I want you to hurt less too,' he said bravely.

'I'm doing better,' Tony admitted quietly, looking away. 'Oh, before I let—' he added, like he'd forgotten. 'Here.' He passed Bucky a card from inside his coat. 'She—Pepper—She was sorry she couldn't come. There's a hearing in LA; she tried to have it moved—'

'It's OK,' Bucky laughed. He clutched the little envelope to his chest, to his heart. 'Tell her thank you from me. From Steve, too, even if he went home.' They sat in, suddenly, a comfortable silence. 'Do you have a car here?' Bucky asked eventually.

'Yeah,' Tony said. 'Do you want a ride home?' Bucky nodded, thankful. He hoped the reporters weren't still outside his house.

His eyes got wet anew, for no reason. 'Oh, God,' he said, pulling his kerchief back out from where he'd tucked it away. 'Oh, fuck, Tony,' he sighed. 'I can't believe she's really gone.'

'I know,' Tony agreed softly, even if he probably didn't. Bucky leant his elbows into his knees, covering his eyes for a moment. He breathed. Tony's hand landed on one of his shoulders, squeezing comfortingly and then staying.

^^^

Bucky should have known something was amiss when the diner looked empty. The lights were on, the open sign bright, and he could see Neepa's head thru the passthru of the kitchen. He pushed the door open, peering about. There were two men in suits in a booth in the very back, looking a lot like hired, private security.

They didn't stand when he came in, but they followed him with their eyes. Bucky had a bad feeling about this.

'Neepa?' Bucky called, eyeing them like they eyed him. 'Everything normal today?'

'No,' she called back. 'No, there is a fancy man here.'

'A fancy—?' he began, confused as all hell.

'I'm very sorry,' Neepa said, popping out of the kitchen with his favourite tea. He took the mug from her and waited for her explanation, thanking her absently for the tea. 'He paid very well for the reservation, but I know you hate politicians.' Bucky realised who it would be, who he'd been trying to avoid so desperately for months. He groaned. He wanted to leave.

'Neepa, no,' he complained, crying softly to her. She nodded, patting his arm.

'It's the Secretary of State,' she told him, confirming his worry. He tossed the hand not holding the mug of delicious tea in the air, unbelievably annoyed. 'He's a very fancy man. He tried to order for you; I told him I knew you better; I made you your usual.'

'You could have taken the reservation and called me,' Bucky pointed out, like a sullen child. 'You could have let him wait and I could have avoided him.'

'That would have been a little dishonest of me,' Neepa chastised. 'He rented the whole restaurant at a good price, after I said a fair one, and you think I should trick him?' Bucky felt like an absolute heel. 'He pays for the food on top!' she cried and he patted her arm, apologising.

'No,' he sighed helplessly, shrugging. 'You're right. OK; it's OK. Look, I was supposed to bring back food to the office; I have their orders. Will you send—?'

'I'll take care of everything,' she said, and she took the oversized Post-It with the office's lunch orders. 'I know this isn't fun, talking with fancy men.'

'Comes with the shield, I guess,' he grumbled, even if he'd taken it nowhere but the MMA place lately. Bucky let Neepa lead him to the back room where she held birthday parties, mostly for old ladies like herself. As promised, Secretary Ross sat at one of the five tables, a pair of meals on the table in front of him. He had a creamy coffee in front of him, not tea.

Bucky used the mug Neepa had handed him as an excuse not to take Secretary Ross's offered hand. 'Mister Secretary,' he greeted with a formal nod instead. 'I didn't expect to see you. Pardon me; I'm underdressed.'

'That isn't a problem,' the Secretary assured him. 'It's just that you've been so reclusive,' Ross chastised, falsely familiar, 'you left me with little choice but to organise a lunch date for us.'

'You must have heard how much I love to be followed,' Bucky said sarcastically, unable to help himself. 'A close friend of mine died recently. I'm trying to set up my office to run a few weeks in my absence, so please, can we be brief today.' Ross bristled. Bucky wondered if he'd always been such a prickly asshole, or if he'd been charming before the war. He remembered making girls on double dates laugh, but he also remembered being smacked upside the head four times a week by his mother, even after he'd moved in with Steve and only stopped by on days working hours let him walk his sisters home from school.

'We simply needed to discuss your signing of the new Accords,' Ross said. Bucky sighed, drinking some tea before it grew cold. 'You know that your name is an important one to be appended.'

'I'm not planning on signing, Mister Secretary,' Bucky said simply.

'The world owes the Avengers an unpayable debt,' Ross began, and Bucky could feel the prepared rhetoric scrape at his patience. 'You’ve fought for us, protected us, risked your lives. While a great many people see you as heroes, there are some, who would prefer the word "vigilantes".' Bucky resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

'Do you really think the operations I lead were vigilantism?' he asked instead. Ross had the decency to hesitate. 'What word would you use, sir?' Bucky pressed, curious if he'd get an honest answer.

Ross was hard to read; Ross said: 'How about "dangerous"?' Bucky sighed again, and then leant back as Neepa delivered a large plate of palak paneer and rice to him and an order of goat biryani to Ross. Bucky thanked her by name and she snuck a disapproving look to Ross for his silence as she left.

'What would you call a group of US-based, enhanced individuals,' Ross went on after their first bites in silence, 'who routinely ignore sovereign borders and inflict their will—'

'We haven't,' Bucky said, interrupting. 'We've been on very specific, limited, and collaborative strikes, not tearing around causing damage. We absolutely have not made a habit of ignoring sovereign borders.'

'There have been disasters in New York, Washington DC, Sokovia,' Ross said.

Bucky again interrupted: 'The Battle of New York was started because SHIELD was messing with a weapon so dangerous and evil that HYDRA were the only humans to previously instrumentalize it. I'll remind you that HYDRA was so hellbent on world destruction that the Nazi Party cut ties with them. That was the previous supervisory board. You can see why I'm distrustful of the idea.'

'Captain—'

'I do not take responsibility for what you’re accusing me and my team of,' Bucky continued, before Ross could cut in. 'We prevented damage in New York from the Chitauri invasion and the nuclear bomb dropped by, I remind you, the regulatory body we were then operating under. The regulatory body you’re proposing is the same one that would have seen the entire island of Manhattan turned into a wasteland, a nuclear wasteland. We saved millions of lives.'

'And DC?' Secretary Ross challenged. 'What of that little fiasco?'

'Oh, when SHIELD fell?' Bucky asked incredulously, failing to keep his impudence from staining his tone. 'When the first regulatory body was revealed to be not only out of control and corrupt but infiltrated by the same terrorist cell they were explicitly founded to stop?'

‘This isn’t the same,’ Ross said; ‘these people are very trusted, and they have been vetted for associations with any known HYDRA operatives, ones we found out about in DC, and ones found in the encrypted information dump.’

'Would you have preferred I let Alexander Pierce, who was the very trusted Secretary of Defence, by the way, arrest me when he wanted to?' Bucky asked, to press his point that it didn't matter who it was: Bucky distrusted the system, all of it.

'I evaded him with precisely zero dollars of damage and zero casualties. There were no civilians killed by the Project: Insight helicarriers or their debris, or by the chaos that day at the Triskelion. The only deaths were of fifteen SHIELD or HYDRA—employees.' That wasn’t the right word; he knew it. He didn't want to say the word insurgent, even tho the State Department had used it to describe HYDRA agents on US soils since. The Secretary of State didn’t challenge him.

'The Insight target list was over eleven million names,' Bucky went on. 'I mourn for those at SHIELD HQ that day who didn't make it out. I mourn for the families who can't be sure if their loved one was HYDRA or not. I am devastated by their pain, but I did not cause it.’

‘That day in DC was a success. We saved eleven million people, sir. Myself included. And you, sir. Your wife.’

‘I won't have you reduce that,’ he finished. He didn't say, but he knew each of the seventy-eight names of the people he couldn’t have saved in New York, all fifteen dead in DC, and which four of the fifteen had families who still wondered on which side their loved one had died. He knew how shattered those families—lovers, friends, whomever—would be, and he knew how long that hurt could last. He knew no one else would be lucky like he'd been, getting Steve back. He knew how much it hurt when people were gone. He had also worked very hard to not recite the seventy-eight, fifteen, eleven names constantly, asking them and God for forgiveness every time he prayed. He’d worked hard to hold his mistakes with as much indulgence as he needed to live with himself; he’d worked hard to know it wasn’t that he didn't save someone but that he couldn’t save everyone.

'You seem to have an answer for everything, Captain,' Ross said.

'I think you might underestimate, sir, how many questions I ask before I go somewhere,' Bucky said. 'I think you might underestimate how many answers I got from people on the ground before I could go somewhere.'

'I know the price civilians paid in every place I ran a mission,' Bucky said. 'I know the price some global leaders paid to work with me. But I'm not going to balance that cost by signing something I think is irresponsible.'

'One hundred and seventeen nations have put their trust in these Accords,' Ross said.

'That's why I've been hard to get in on the debate, sir,' Bucky pointed out. 'I don't have a place in it as a random US citizen.'

'You're Captain America,' Ross reminded him, like Bucky could have possibly forgotten.

'That's the call sign I use on radios and coms,' Bucky agreed, to be difficult. 'It's also the name of a comic book character popularised in the forties and fifties. It's not an authoritative title, like Supreme Court Justice. I don't have a legal or civic responsibility, not a real one. One hundred and seventeen countries agree with the idea behind the Accords; who am I to pipe up and say it's wrong when I could instead just step back from it all?'

'I've worked with a lot of the people who will sign this on behalf of their country,' Bucky said. 'They're good leaders and they act by the will of their people. The comic book title gives me no people to act by the will of; I'm not signing.'

'Captain,' Ross sighed. 'When it comes time to ratify these Accords, it is your name that should be at the top of our list of operatives. You're the Captain of the Avengers.'

'I've stepped down,' Bucky corrected. 'Civilian life,' Bucky said. 'Paparazzi, domestic life, office work, dinner with friends from the VA: I'm living as a private citizen, just data mining the HYDRA files, like a lot of other NGOs. There's no need for me to sign.'

'Can Captain America simply resign his post?' Ross asked.

'I will always be willing to step up in a crisis, but I can't make it my life anymore,' Bucky said, looking away. 'I haven't fought since Ultron, and I would have stopped after the final HYDRA strikes in East Europe if I could have. Closest thing to fighting I've done since is gone and helped direct and conduct search-and-rescue after that huge earthquake hit Asia. I'll go whenever someone asks something like that of me. That's not combatancy, and it's not enough for you to compel me to sign or retire. No one at the Red Cross is being stalked by your office.'

'It's also not self-motivated, sir; I went where invited,' Bucky pointed out. 'I don't trust the idea of the supervisory board like the one the Accords would build. SHIELD mistreated me on its own, without the influence of how HYDRA members wanted me treated. SHIELD tried to bomb me, in New York, with all Manhattan's civilians. It tried to sue me so they could create supersoldiers. I cannot trust this board you're building.'

'One hundred and seventeen—' Ross tried, unbelievably irritated.

'Which is why I've sat out the debate, Mister Secretary,' Bucky repeated, 'because maybe you're right: that is a large proportion of the world. Maybe we do need to train people to be able to do what I and my team did to HYDRA; maybe we always need that level of human weaponry in the world now. Maybe those new teams need a handler, or a global set at least divined by some form of representative power, at least an attempt at one. I understand why you think it's necessary.'

'But it scares the hell out of me,' Bucky said. 'It's not something I could under which I could operate.'

'You know, this isn't much different than being a grunt in the Army, and you did a fantastic job as a greenhorn soldier, as a greenhorn sergeant; you rose those ranks very quickly, Captain. It is not as if this structure is alien to you,' Secretary Ross said. Bucky blinked, frowning and taking a full three seconds to give the Secretary time to realise his false equivalencies.

'I was drafted, sir,' Bucky reminded him. Ross's eyes shuttered for a second, like he couldn't believe he'd forgotten. 'I had to go to war or go to jail. If you don't fight well when you're conscripted, the kid next to you dies.'

'Besides,' he added, 'as we all now know, I am a type of person the Nazis would have held in the camps.' He had heard the Secretary's bland statement of support. He'd appreciated the bland gesture blandly. 'My partner is the type they would have shot before loading the rest of his synagogue into a train, no question about it. It's not really the same thing.'

'I really just want my war to be over, sir,' Bucky said. 'Can you understand that?' He looked down at his food, after a moment of too-honest eye contact. He felt incredibly tired, suddenly, like he'd been carrying thousands of pounds of concrete for too long.

'You understand why I can't stop needling you?' Ross asked.

'Yes, sir,' Bucky sighed. He did. He was still Captain America, no matter how far he stepped down. He understood how important it was for big names to support new ideas; he understood silence was interpreted as dissent. He preferred silence to speaking, because speaking would mean saying out loud that he thought eventually the Accords would bite the world in the ass. He didn't want to be cynical; he wished to God it would protect the world like they thought it would.

'Then we agree to continue to try to have this talk,' Ross said, in a tone that meant they were done, that they wouldn't. Bucky frowned.

'Sir?'

'What a pity I couldn't sit down with you before the signing in Vienna.' Bucky stared at him. 'My grandfather fought in the same war as you,' Ross told him after a silence. Christ, Bucky thought, because Ross was older than him and Bucky had fought with his grandfather. 'Something of what you said reminded me of that fact very strongly.'

'He would be,' Ross began, visibly carrying numbers in his head, 'one hundred and twenty-three years old if he were alive.'

'Sweet Jesus,' Bucky said without thinking, because his one hundred and twenty-third birthday wasn't too far off; unless a piano dropped on his head, he'd live to see it, too.

'I know,' Ross agreed. 'Makes me think. Would have been a hell of a long time to spend fighting Nazis, and HYDRA.' He looked away. 'I know Nick Fury had SHIELD sue you. This isn't that.'

'It's not much different,' Bucky said. 'They sued me for my DNA, which isn't like this, sir; you're right,' he explained. 'But the conditions I had to live with while we fought the suit compelled me in some of the ways the Accords would. When the Mandarin and AIM were attacking Tony, terrorising the President? I couldn't help, and it was because of the same conditions spelt out in some sections of the Accords.'

'It would have been a long time to fight,' Ross said again.

'It has been a long time, sir,' Bucky agreed. 'I'm tired.'

'Well, until the next one, then,' Ross said. He stuck a final piece of goat in his mouth and stood. 'Captain.'

'Mister Secretary,' Bucky said. The man left and Bucky was left to finish his meal in silence. He reached across Neepa's neat little centrepieces and stole Ross's leftover naan. He swept it thru his own sauce and thought very hard.

^^^

It took weeks for the air to stop feeling like glass.

Then one day, Bucky came home from the office and the radio was on for the first time since they got the call. Bucky left his work bag and found Steve in the corner of the living room behind his little easel, humming against the music and completely unaware that Bucky was staring at him.

'Hiya, sweetheart,' Bucky said. Steve almost started, looking up. He smiled, a real one. It didn't last long, falling from his face as he looked back at the canvas. 'Did you go out today?'

'No,' Steve said.

'You oughta go out more,' Bucky said. 'You haven't been out since—' since the funeral, he realised. He didn't say that. 'Well, since.' He knew Steve had been to been to the synagogue, but that wasn't the same. It was a community, sure, but it wasn't enough to fill up a life on its own. He hadn't been to any of their other events, or visited with friends, even Sam.

'Yeah, well,' Steve said, shrugging. He didn't say anything else. Bucky wondered where Steve could go, where people wouldn't stare and whisper. He wondered where Steve went that wasn't to visit Peggy or to be dragged out by Pepper or Sam. It was a small life, but maybe it was enough for Steve. Bucky wasn't sure he believed it was; Steve used to lead a fuller life than this. He used to work as long of hours as someone would give him, then would go to planning sessions to help organise rallies and to make leaflets for the groups he supported, until he dragged himself home bone-thin and wheezing. He had had a whole circle of friends Bucky barely knew, and he still spent time with Bucky and his. Steve used to go to night school twice a week, learning about illustration and how to shape his art and choose his colours to make people think. He used to go stir crazy when he was sick enough to stay in but not sick enough to be too exhausted for boredom. Steve didn't seem to mind the cabin fever now; he didn't leave the house at all most days.

'You said something at Peggy's funeral,' Bucky said, bringing up something he'd trying to be brave enough to ask for a while. 'When you spoke, I mean.'

'It was good of them to let me,' Steve said when Bucky's voice trapped itself. 'Not everybody thinks so highly of me.'

'You said you'd been at Camp Lehigh with her.' Steve hummed his affirmative easily, like he didn't realise that was what Bucky was challenging. He was certain, more focused on paint mixing than Bucky. Bucky couldn't see the easel from here; Steve had turned it towards the back wall of the living room, sitting in the blind spot between the windows; whether he knew it or not, it was the same blind spot Fury had chosen when Steve managed to shoot him anyway. Bucky hated when he turned the easel away; it was the same silent cue he used to give before the war with his sketchbooks: Bucky wasn't allowed to look 'till it was done.

'Why were you at Camp Lehigh?' Bucky prompted. Steve gave him a glance. He was mixing a cool lilac colour, it turned out. Bucky was terrible at guessing exactly what would turn out from the raw paints and pigments Steve started with. 'It was all SSR; there weren't any Army medics there. Most of the docs and nurses weren't from any military branch.'

'I was with the SSR when I was there,' Steve corrected, bizarrely. 'Doctor Erskine enlisted me.'

'What?' Bucky asked. 'What do you mean?' Steve glanced at him again, putting down the odd fork he used to mix paint. He picked up a clean brush, thumbing over the fibres absently before dipping them onto his palette.

'Doctor Erskine,' Steve repeated. 'They called you in that morning, made you leave that afternoon. We were supposed to take Dot and Ellie to the Expo, remember?'

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed sceptically. He'd apologised to Steve the morning he had had to leave; he'd arranged for them a night out and it would fall apart without him, leaving Steve to burn under rejection. Steve had shrugged, promising he wouldn't take it too hard when the girls ditched him. 'You telling me you took Dot and Ellie out on the town all by yourself?'

'Uh, no,' Steve admitted, just as rueful as he used to be about his failures on his and Bucky's dates. 'No, they ditched me after I gave them their tickets. They bought me some popcorn for your ticket tho, took a friend, so that was all right. They had a night out with Geraldine Thompson instead of us; you remember her?'

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed with a laugh. He almost never had an occasion where Steve was the one who asked him: hey, you remember this?

'Then, uh,' Steve said, hunching, too intent on his palette. It took him a full moment to continue. 'You know. Some parts of the night are fuzzy. I think I saw Howard's show. He had a flying car, and then I saw the enlistment booth.'

'You already got turned down five times!' Bucky snapped, unable to help himself. 'Jesus fucking Christ, Stevie. You're lucky they didn't toss your skinny ass in jail. Jesus fucking Christ.'

'I know, I know,' Steve sighed. 'I was in the exam room, and this military police guy came in, and that was my first thought: Bucky is gonna kill me when he finds out I got my dumb ass arrested. But then Doctor Erskine came in.'

'He was an incredible man,' Steve said. He said it with a quiet reverence that made Bucky believe him. He couldn't believe Steve had ever been a candidate for Project: Rebirth. The programme had been rigorous; Bucky hadn't been so sore from noncombative causes in any other time of his life. He couldn't imagine the frail Steve he used to have keeping pace.

'I wish I'd known him longer. Science aside, I think he had a lot of wisdom. He asked me some questions I can't remember, but he asked me one I do. He asked me if I wanted to kill Nazis.' Bucky stared. He remembered being asked the exact same question. He remembered the strange look on Doctor Erskine's face when he'd mentioned Steve. He wondered why the doctor hadn't told him, how he could have gone so long without knowing who he'd replaced, whose spot, whose opportunity he'd taken. He'd never questioned whose fate he'd stolen, taking the spot.

'I told him I didn't like bullies,' Steve said. 'Same thing I told you when you got your draft card. He brought me into the programme. The next morning, I packed up the rooms I was renting; I gave your ma a box of your things, our table, and some drawings I'd done of you recently, in case you didn't come home.'

'And a week later, Philips and Erskine—in retrospect, I think they really were arguing about me—they were arguing while Peggy was putting us thru our paces, and Phillips tossed a dummy grenade, but you know, we didn't know it was a dummy; somebody yelled grenade and meant it, you know?' Steve shook his head.

'I didn't think,' he went on; 'I just jumped on it. Peggy was right there, and there were twenty-five men all around me. I'm nothing against that, you know? I laid there and laid there and it never went off. Scared the living hell out of me; I really thought that was it for me, and then it never went off.' Bucky could see it in his mind's eye, the exact dirt field where Peggy would put them thru their paces before lunch. He could imagine it; it was just like Steve to jump on a grenade for others.

'Philips sent me away the next day. Peggy thought he expected the doctors at the medical post would give me an administrative discharge he couldn't, with Erskine protecting me. I ended up at the front.

'Are you sure?' Bucky asked. He hated asking Steve that; he wanted to believe everything Steve told him about what had happened to him, no matter how patchy or odd some of his details were. He couldn't believe this; he didn't want it to be true. 'Are you sure that you had a spot in Project: Rebirth? You're the one Phillips sent away?'

'Yeah,' Steve said, not sounding offended at all by Bucky's doubt. 'Yeah, I remember Peggy punching Gilmore Hodge in the face. And you must have known. You never had to introduce me to any of the SSR folk attached to your commando unit.'

'I never thought,' Bucky said. 'I thought—I don't know; I didn't question it. Everyone was whispering about you, recovered from Zola's experiments. I thought they knew you from that.'

'Nope,' Steve said lightly, unbothered. Bucky didn't understand how he could be unbothered. Steve just sat with his stocking feet propped on the ring of his painting stool; he paid more attention to the grey paint that dropped onto on his trousers than Bucky's usurpation. He was wearing the socks Bucky had knit him. He'd almost worn them thru, like the last three pairs Bucky had given him.

'I replaced you,' Bucky confessed, because clearly, Steve hadn't put it together. Steve shot him an unimpressed look, but he had. 'I took your spot in the Project. Doctor Erskine chose me instead of you.'

'I noticed,' Steve said a little dryly. 'I hate to be the one to break this to you, Buck, but you're Captain America.'

'Very funny,' Bucky said. Steve chuckled to himself. Bucky felt unbelievably irritated that Steve didn't seem to realise how big of a deal this was. 'Jesus, Steve. This serum—I mean, look what the half version of Zola's did to you! This one could've fixed your asthma. It woulda fixed everything; you would've been healthy.'

'Well, I got Zola's instead,' Steve said. He looked away from Bucky, avoiding his eyes. 'Besides, it's all eugenics anyway, at the end of the day. If it'd been reproducible, it'd've been used to fix people like me without asking. I'd've been erased anyway.'

'Do you feel erased now?' Bucky asked. 'Still?' Steve met his eyes. He knew his answer mattered.

'Sometimes,' Steve said honestly. Sometimes felt like a relief; Bucky had thought when Steve had first been found out as the Winter Soldier that he would never come back from the erasure. Steve was stable now, capable of everything he tried most days.

Bucky tried to imagine what it would have been to be Steve before the war. Steve was sickly, and he was sometimes kept in hospital at the doctors' will and not his own. The charity hospital had shocked him with insulin once, kept him for days, barely conscious and seizing to cure his asthma. Steve hadn't ever talked about that with Bucky, and sitting here now, Bucky realised the difficult treatment must have felt no different than torture. It hadn't worked, because of course asthma wasn't made by the head, like Bucky's breathlessness after a dream about drowning. Bucky imagined himself trying to find Steve in the big building at Brooklyn Hospital and finding him not under blankets in a common ward, but strapped down and seizing or—

Bucky had found him like that once, on a table, mutated, his body changing and forced into something different and not his. He hadn't thought about how long doctors who could strap you down had been in Steve's life, even if Zola made everything into Hell on Earth.

'You could've been Captain America, Steve,' Bucky murmured. 'I took your place.'

'It wasn't my place,' Steve said. 'Erskine gave me chance; that was all. It was the rest of 'em that thought I wasn't enough.' He shrugged. 'That happens sometimes. Sometimes you're not enough and somebody else gets to bat. You didn't take anything from me.' Bucky shook his head, scoffing. Steve was always so damned fair. It seemed impossible for such fairness to be woven into someone's fabric like it was for Steve.

'It's all eugenics anyway,' Steve said again, and Bucky realised he had been erased too. People had looked at Bucky like he was normal before, and when he fit in, it seemed like there weren't frames to hold people up to. He had never felt different because of anything anybody else could see. Now he saw how the rest of the standards worked, too, removed from them and hulking around at almost seven feet. Maybe to Steve, who'd grown up aware of all the moulds he'd never fit, it looked like Bucky had been mutated as much as Zola had changed Steve, at least the first time.

'It's been almost a century,' Bucky grumbled, 'and I'm only now finding out you—I can't believe I took your spot in the programme; of anyone's, I took yours.'

'You know, Peggy believed in me, actually,' Steve amended. 'It was everybody else, but Erskine gave me the chance and Peggy—Peggy believed in me, too.'

'I wonder why she didn't tell me I replaced you,' Bucky said.

'I thought you knew,' Steve said. 'It doesn't change anything.'

'No,' Bucky agreed, even if it might have. Maybe he would have tried to share the mantle, somehow. Steve always had thrown the shield as well or better than Bucky did. Bucky might have had a more symmetrical story, might have had something more for the Smithsonian to focus on, something to fill the public memory with anything about who Steve Rogers was before they found out about the Winter Soldier. He might have gotten more than a dedicated piece of glass and a low-resolution photo; Steve might not live with such shame now. His time away—what a euphemism—might have meant more than suffering for him and grieving for Bucky. 'Doesn't change a thing.'

'You look really beautiful today,' Steve added, even as he frowned at his palette and pulled more grey into his blue. Bucky felt a smile creep up despite himself. It didn't feel as wrong as it should, to smile in a world without Peggy. Steve looked up in time to see Bucky's flush. He smiled too.


	4. Chapter 4

Some of the best nights Nat had now were ones like this: consolidating notes in the quiet of the Adjunct Hospital, on call as patients slept in their rooms and night nurses gossiped at the station down the hall. Reading over her notes reminded her of the progress her patients had made and made her more objective about the things which had nagged and worried her since making first note of them. She liked the quiet background noises of the hospital. She liked working with people directly, of course—She had liked working with the Winter Soldier enough that she'd stayed on as regular staff, after all—but there was something about this kind of paperwork that made her feel calm. 

'Knock knock,' someone said at her open door. Nat looked up from where she slouched at her desk in abysmal but comfortable typing posture. Maria stood there, two coffees in hand and a greeting smile on her face. Nat scrambled to her feet, then wondered why. 

'Hey,' she said, coolly. She turned a piece of paper over to its blank side, anonymizing her notes. 'It's late.'

'Well, I remember from when we worked together: you like to work very late once in a while rather than a little late more often,' Maria said simply. 'I have a friend in the TBI ward right now, so I know the machine's out in this wing.' She hefted the branded cup of coffee a little. 'Thought I'd bring you some.' Nat looked at the two cups in Maria's hand.

'Sorry about your friend,' Nat offered. Maria shrugged. 

'It wasn't as bad as it could have been. They're doing really well here, and they'll be home with their family soon,' Maria said simply. 'Are you gonna invite me in?' She hefted a coffee again, and Nat fully understood the latte was for her. 

'Yes,' she said quickly. 'I don't have a chair, but, um, come on.' Maria came in. Nat's desk didn't have chairs for visitors—it was really a work desk, not an office desk—so she was about to offer her office mate's chair when Maria propped her hip on Nat's desk. She propped her hip up, one foot dangling and her strong leg along the edge of the dark wood. She placed a cardboard cup in front of Nat's seat. Nat could read the confusing barista shorthand in white chalk-ink along the lid. Maria had gotten her a hazelnut latte. Maria had gotten her her favourite. She didn't even know how Maria had known. 'How did you know?' 

'Your coffee order? I asked one of the nurses from your department,' Maria admitted. 

'Why?' Nat asked, even as she picked up the coffee and took off the lid. She let the steam escape, cooling the hot cup enough for her tongue. 

'So you'd be impressed that I knew your coffee order,' Maria said frankly. Nat tried not to grin. Maria did grin, but she fiddled with the zarf of her cup before going on. 'Explaining my flirtations makes me wonder if they're not welcome.' 

'No,' Nat said. 'No, I mean, I welcome—I'm just surprised, I guess.' She looked down because she didn't know where else to look. 

'Surprised?' Maria pressed. Nat shrugged. 

She felt like every time she thought of someone romantically, reached out in that way, she turned everything into disaster. She felt differently, being reached to by Maria. Still, she had known how she felt drawn to Bucky, who was different from the men she'd been with over the years, who had held her like she might be delicate and worth not breaking. She had to suspect now that SHIELD—Rumlow and the version of Zola that lived then, as it turned out—had sent her to spy on Bucky not in spite of the draw they had to each other, even on the helicarrier when they first met, but because of it. 

She'd thought briefly of Bruce, but when she'd shared with Bucky her worry that she wanted something serious from someone and didn't think she could get it because she wasn't as much of a woman as she should be, he'd been a little tipsy and inarticulate, but he'd almost been offended at the idea she was a monster. When she'd spent all that time upstate with Bruce, she'd thought maybe they could be something, two people mutilated, two people who understood what it was to have no control. She'd told him she felt like a monster, and he hadn't protested the idea. For some reason, it had bothered her. It was maybe even unfair to compare it, or him. It was just a quiet conversation before he disappeared after Ultron, but it had felt like a cracking blow to her in the moment. He hadn't even noticed she'd been upset by it. He'd left that afternoon, back to his lab in another building on the campus, and she'd smoked a joint with Wanda on the twins' balcony instead of thinking any more about Bruce. 

'Sorry,' Maria said. 'Am I being forward?' 

'No, it's just coffee,' Nat said. It wasn't a ring or a real courting gesture. It was only her favourite cup of coffee. It was her complicated life history that made it feel like the thought was the height of compassion and consideration. 'It's just coffee.' 

'Well, it's coffee with affection mixed in,' Maria said. It made Nat brave enough to look into her whiskey-brown eyes. 'You know, coffee and the hope that you'll enjoy the coffee I brought more than the coffee you could fetch. Drink,' she urged. 'It's good. Warm you up.' Nat lifted her coffee, breathed in the smell, and took a cautious sip of the heat. It turned out to be perfect, perfectly warm without scalding at all, and she took a real sip with satisfaction. 'Did I get it right?'

'You did; thank you,' Nat said. 'Are you still at Stark Industries?' she asked, remembering Maria had ended up there immediately after SHIELD had collapsed. 

'I am,' she replied. 'There's still a lot of Stark Industries weapons on the black markets, particularly in Africa. It's a lot like what I used to do, just way lower stakes, more concrete results.' 

'Results?' 

'Yeah, with SHIELD, it's a strike mission here, recon there,' Maria said. 'I was the Deputy Director and I didn't know half of our Projects, let alone individual ops. In this job, I find out about someone using STARK weapons to legitimise their water cartel; I go there; there are no longer ten thousand artillery shells being used to threaten a neighbourhood. Concrete results.'

'Without cartels, how do people get water?' Nat asked. 

'In that precise example, the locals let the Maria Stark Foundation put in some proper lines. We don't always get to do anything but confiscate illegally purchased weapons. But we got to put in communal washrooms and fountains and kitchens, nothing in people's homes, but it still made a difference there,' Maria said. 'And you. Do you like it here?' 

'I do,' Nat replied. 'It, uh.' She blushed. 'It feels like rebuilding.' Maria seemed to like that. Nat tucked her hair behind her left ear. 'What I used to do was always... Violent,' she decided. She quirked a brow, trying to hide her anxiety behind self-deprecation. 'And until Clint gave me a chance, I never thought I could do anything but destroy. He said he worked for something great, called SHIELD, and I could defend something that mattered.' 

'Then going straight was just working for the laundering joint instead of the bookie, you know?' She shrugged. 'I'm going to sign the Accords so I can keep working with the Avengers, but as soon as there's nothing left for me to teach the kids I'm teaching now, I'll retire, I think. Do this instead.' 

'Wow, so you really like it here,' Maria said. 'You're not just, kind of, passively liking it; you're liking it.' 

'I am,' she laughed. 'Yeah, I'm training. I'm reading textbooks in my spare time. I'm turning into a nerd like Bucky Barnes.' Maria laughed. 'It's nice. It's something I didn't think I'd get.' She made a small show of shivering. Nat laughed a little. 'I know,' she said. 'I keep it too cold in here when it's just me at night. Here.' She put her cup down, turning a bit. She grabbed her jacket, for all it was just structured black canvas, and stood to drape it over Maria's lap. Maria laughed a little too, quiet and small, and thanked her. 'It—I think it reminds me of home,' Nat admitted as she sat back down. 'You know, I mean, you know my history.'

'I do,' Maria agreed, tucking herself in a little better, even on her half-seated perch. She used to be Nick's second. She knew just what every defector employed by SHIELD had done before defecting. She probably knew, Nat realised, about the children's hospital Nat had burned down when she was barely too old for their wards, but Maria was still here, with a hazelnut latte. She'd gotten it special. 

'It's hard,' Nat went on, hiding the realisation that Maria knew, she knew, everything, and she was still here, 'to know what's a real memory and what's something they gave me, but I think I remember living in a city, a street level apartment on a little road. My mother sewed and fixed clothing. I think my father made glass, for windows? There's a word for it.' 

'A glazier,' Maria supplied. 

'Yes,' Nat said, smiling slowly. 'A glazier. I'm not sure if they're real, but. I like those memories best.' 

'Would you ever want to find your family?' Maria asked. 'Your real one.' 

'No,' Nat said easily. 'No, I'd probably be finding out what happened to them, not finding them. I might've even killed them; who knows? I'm sorry to be cliché, but ignorance is better than knowing would be.' She couldn't help but wonder about the anonymous victims of the Red Room, if it made sense for each ballerina to kill their own family for the state, so the state could disappear them all at once, so no one could ever look for their children. Neighbours would assume the children paid for the sins of their father, not that their children were spiders being trained. 

'Clichés are cliché because they were true so many times people got sick of it, that's all,' Maria said. 'Most of the biggest truths aren't novel at all.' 

'There's nothing novel about coffee, for example,' Maria said. She gave Nat a coy smile. Nat felt herself return it. She was about to press for more when a nurse appeared in the doorway. 

'Sorry,' they said, apologetic. 'Nat, could you come help us get someone settled back down?' 

'Yes. Sorry, I've got to—' Nat tried, and Maria was already standing. She draped Nat's coat, folded loosely, onto the desk. Nat rounded back to the front of her desk, to lock her door behind Maria and follow the nurse to whichever patient was unsettled with nightmares. 'Sorry,' she said again, surprised by how much she wished Maria could just stay.

'Don't be,' Maria said easily. 'Duty calls. Here.' Her beautiful fingers flicked out, suddenly a small square of cardstock between them. Nat took it. 'My number,' Maria said simply. 'I'll see you again, soon.' She touched Nat's wrist, wrapping her long fingers around Nat's soft tendons for a brief second, squeezing warmly. 'Let me know, even if you just want coffee again.' She let go. 

Nat watched her leave. Her wrist felt bubbly, like latte foam and hazelnut warmth. Her chest was still lit up from that first sip, and she wondered if she had ever felt quite like this from only a touch on the wrist. Bucky had been able to light her up like this sometimes, when they were truly alone and he felt like making her laugh, but Maria left the tingle without even saying anything, just by gripping and moving her thumb the tiniest bit she had across Nat's pulse point before pulling away. Nat tasted the hazelnut on her lips. 

She looked down at the card. Maria's work number was there, glossily printed on one side in the finery typical of Stark Industries, but on the back, in cheap pen and loopy writing was a personal number and a little note: my order is black, two sugars, cinnamon if it's there. 

'Nat?' the nurse said again. Nat tucked the card away. 

'Yeah,' she replied, even tho she felt a thousand miles from the Adjunct, dizzy like an idiot romantic. She hadn't thought she had enough unscarred heart to feel dizzy and romantic. She looked over at the door and straightened her mind into work drive. 'I'm ready.' 

^^^

Bucky took a breath at the door to steady himself. The guard who had fetched him from and searched him in the antechamber settled at a post, watching Bucky like an owl watched a mouse she'd trapped for later. There was nothing for it, no reason to delay, so Bucky pushed the door open. A translator, probably, was already seated on the couch of the stateroom, perched in an innocuous but well fitted dark suit. Her high heels were impossibly so, taller than pairs Pepper wore to red carpets and media events; he resisted the urge to ask her to show off that she could walk in them. The Wakandan Prince stood at the window, staring out over the city of Oran.

Bucky could see himself in the reflection of the room in the glass. He figured T'Challa could too; he didn't announce himself, but waited. He fell into parade rest near the seats, looking at the grey streets, lit-up buildings and green parks. He wondered how different this city looked to the ones Prince T’Challa would have grown up in. He wondered if Wakanda had formerly colonial cities like this at all, with Parisian architecture in the old town, and tall, modern glass behind. There hadn't been any real settlements in the mudfields where Ultron stole vibranium and naturally, he'd been invited to meet the Prince outside the Kingdom itself. Bucky understood why they'd met in a neutral city in Africa, of course, but he wished he'd gotten a chance to see a Wakandan city with his own eyes. 

Bucky had been to Oran last as a private, it had been so long ago. It was unfathomable how much it had changed. He'd been awake long enough that he had to wonder if New York had looked this different to him at first. He remembered being shocked by the taxis, how different they were, still yellow and constant. He was shocked here by how expansive the city had gotten. He had stared for ages at the modern light rail rolling thru streets he'd last seen with British tanks rolling down them, soldiers in windows. 

'Captain America,' the Prince said eventually. He turned from the window. T’Challa was younger than Bucky had expected, because he knew the Wakandan King was nearly eighty. 

'Your Highness,' he greeted. He bowed when the man faced him nonetheless. He didn’t know what Wakandan court etiquette was. He didn't know if it applied outside the kingdom. He should have Googled it. He hoped bowing were as universal a sign of respect as movies had led him to believe.

'Or Barnes,' T'Challa amended. 'Here, at least, we should speak as men, not as the responsibilities of our titles. Diplomacy is not my strong suit; I am not a politician.' 

'I should like to speak as men,' Bucky agreed. T’Challa gestured for him to sit on the couch, across the coffee table from two regal armchairs. 

'I should like also to extend thanks to your father for sending you here to speak with me,’ Bucky said, once he’d sat. T’Challa slouched, resting on the sturdy arm of the armchair. It reminded him ‘I don’t overlook the significance of your visit. I’m not here to act as a diplomat either. I’m not a politician, and I have never been. I’m a soldier and a commander. I understand the burden of protecting people, and I understand the gravity of my mistake.' 

'There should be no room for anything else,' T’Challa said. 

'There isn’t anything else, Your Highness,' Bucky said. 'I made a mistake in crisis and I will regret it even if I were to earn your country and your family’s forgiveness. I should have asked you for help in a crisis in your country. I should not have crossed your borders, even in a mud field where only criminals trade.' 

'You should not have,' T’Challa said. Bucky knew this. He said as much and Prince T’Challa nodded. 

'It was a decision made in panic,' Bucky offered in the silence. 'I should have known better. I hope there’s something I can do to apologise to you, your father, and your people.' 

'I cannot say I do not understand your panic,' T’Challa replied. 'The machine: please, its English name?' 

'Ultron,' Bucky supplied. 

'Ultron was a terrible thing,' T’Challa agreed. 'I have seen the wreckage of Sokovia, and in Korea, and in every country to where he sent—' T’Challa substituted a Wakandan word seamlessly; the translator provided the words warrior drones for Bucky. '—Everywhere: there were either people dead or buildings destroy. I understand your fear of him.' 

'It is not an excuse for having crossed your borders,' Bucky said. 'You should also understand I didn’t have a contact at a Wakandan embassy or in your capital either. I didn't know who to tell or how much time I had before it was too late to do anything. None of this is an excuse.' 

'No, it is not,' T’Challa said. 'We are a proud nation. We keep to ourselves from the rest of the world because we know it is not to be always trusted.' 

'I did nothing to disprove that belief,' Bucky said. 

'But you are a humble man,' T’Challa said, sounding almost confused. 'America is not a country who is known as humble but you sit here and speak as you are humble.' Something about T'Challa's mildly baffled tone amused him. He couldn't help a small smile. 

'I don’t really know who America has been in the last century,' Bucky offered. 'I was a kid for the part that made sense to me, and then I woke up here. I've read the histories, but there’s just—' 

His smile faded. He shook his head. 'Seventy years is a long time on its own, you know, and then when SHIELD and so many other things were actually HYDRA: even people who lived it don’t know what’s really happened, so there’s no chance of my catching up now. Hard to get cocky when you’ve missed so much.’ He shrugged eventually, when T’Challa simply watched him, clearly thinking. He wondered if staring wasn’t rude in Wakanda, or if as a prince one simply didn't need to worry about such things.

'This is not something I considered when I heard of you,' the Prince said finally. 

'Well, it’s hard not to be humble when you’re missing this much time,' Bucky said again. 'Knowledge is power. Besides, I don’t really represent America, or the States, I guess. I don’t try to, anyway; it’s just a codename they gave me. I was drafted, you know; I never wanted to be a soldier, let alone such an emblematic one.' 

'Drafted,' T'Challa repeated, but he turned to listen to his translator before Bucky could explain. 'I see. We do not have this idea in my culture.’ 

‘Before the war, I was a baker,’ Bucky offered, if it helped T'Challa see him as anything but a soldier. ‘I mean, during the Crash, I worked anything that paid, you know, but when I got my draft card, I'd been working in a bakery. Their kid was a school teacher, so I probably woulda taken it over if the war hadn’t—or if I hadn’t ended up here.’ 

‘You would never have thought,’ T’Challa said, adding, ‘to go, and to fight in your country’s war.’

‘I had people to take care of already,’ Bucky said. He left it at that. He didn't know if it were his sisters he meant or Steve. He remembered taking them to Steve’s mother’s apartment, after she died and Bucky moved in, to give his own ma a night to herself. He remembered when Eliza had gotten scared by the loud, pitching wheeze of Steve struggling to breathe, loud even from behind the thin wall of the bedroom. He remembered calming her before going to help Steve, lighting his asthma cigarette for him since he didn't have enough air. 

‘And now? There is a facility for training,’ T’Challa said. ‘There are the New Avengers and there are many things about the world changing quickly.’

‘Some of the changes don’t have anything to do with my team,’ Bucky said. ‘Every place we’ve been was a HYDRA cell; we had a very specific mission and we strayed from it only in crisis. A lot of what makes me feel like today is so much crazier than my day isn’t because of my team.’ 

‘But there is a school,’ T’Challa repeated. 

‘I don't know if I think there should be,’ Bucky admitted. ‘I took a step back, so it's not my call anymore. I've expressed my concerns to everyone there whom I know. Tony’s insistent that we—Earth, I mean—that we need to have people to call on when something goes wrong.’ 

‘Personally, I couldn’t keep fighting,’ Bucky said. ‘The cost of fighting was too high for me to live with it. Maybe it’s weak, but I couldn’t be a soldier anymore. The price of not fighting is that it’s not my call.’ 

Bucky hurried to add: ‘I could put you in contact with any member of the team who might have enough authority to deserve an audience with you. I can’t fight, but I don’t think my war should be made sustainable in my stead. If you, with the right to say something, want to say something, I’ll help that.’ 

T’Challa looked away. Bucky knew this was a hard role for a boy in his twenties. He’d been a sergeant at this age; he had to imagine being a prince was much harder, especially when one were a prince in a country where the monarchy remained the executive branch's head no matter the path of its bicameral democracy. 

‘Do you trust Mister Stark?’

‘I do,’ Bucky said. ‘I don't mistrust the outcome of the facility; we'll have new Avengers, not villains. They’ll be well trained to protect civilians, to act more responsibly than their teachers have, and to defend the Earth, but I could afford to step back because HYDRA is gone. If HYDRA’s gone, do we need more Avengers?’

‘If you have stepped back, who is the humble man who doubts and makes sure of their choices?’ T'Challa asked him. Bucky blinked at that. 

‘I guess I'm not sure,’ he admitted. ‘Tony doubts himself; it’s why he wants a small force behind him. I’m not sure if that translates to the humility I think you mean.’ The translator shot a subtle side-eye at T'Challa at that, and Bucky realised perhaps he should have phrased more delicately his assumption about the Prince's thought. 

‘There are Accords forming,’ T’Challa told him after a long pause. 'My father intends to help them. The Accords would make a record of who can fight like you. It would give—It is not quite control, but it would give control to a body formed by many nations.’ 

‘A supervisory board,’ Bucky guessed. 'Oversight.' The translator gave the word again when T’Challa shot her a glance. 

‘If I were to ask your advice?’ T’Challa asked. 'If I were to ask what I should tell my father to do about these?' Bucky hesitated. 

‘Are we still speaking as men, or as a man and a Prince, or just as people who represent our countries?’

‘As men, Barnes,’ T’Challa said. He said it dismissively, annoyed, like Bucky should have known. 

‘My friends call me Bucky,’ he offered, in response to the dismissive tone. 

‘And when we have the chances to speak as men, I will call you this,’ T’Challa agreed. ‘You should call me by name as well.’ Bucky didn't quite know what to say. 

‘I am a young prince,’ T’Challa went on, ‘but I am a symbol for my people like Captain America was for your country when so many did not want to protect or reject the Nazi eugenics.’ Bucky smiled, oddly comforted that someone out there remembered that the sentence ‘Captain America was invented to boost American morale’ was code for a lot of things, and not all of them were glowing and positive. He remembered Better Baby contests; he remembered the doctors who didn't try to hide the fact they thought the species would be better off if delicate people like Steve died out, especially if people born like Steve dared to be born anything but white. ‘I have a responsibility to speak for what’s best for my country, not what is best for me.’ 

‘I don’t know how to react to this,’ T'Challa said. ‘What advice do you have, as a man who leads well most times and is humble?’ 

‘I’m not certain what the UN has written into the Accords,’ Bucky prefaced. ‘I've read summaries, and some of the proposed pages, but I probably know less about what they actually are than you do. But, having heard the rumours I have, I can’t sign.'

'When I first woke up, after the Battle of New York, SHIELD wanted me to sign a contract with them,' Bucky said. 'That contract spelt out certain terms that are very similar to what the Accords seem to say. It gave a body of international representatives the power to compel me to action, or worse, to inaction. When I refused it, the Director of SHIELD sued me, legally, and legitimately; he wasn't HYDRA. He was as legitimate as the people who wrote the Accords are, and he wanted the right to—to call me to any battle, no questions asked.'

'These Accords sound like a new, shiny version of the SHIELD group that oversaw the Avengers Initiative. It sounds like an extended, multinational version of something I didn't want to sign before and don't want to sign now. I don't want to give up my right to decide what's best. If I signed, and the new committee told me to go somewhere where the people on the ground didn't want help? Like Chile—they had a huge, active HYDRA cell and told me thanks for the files; please stay the hell out. If I signed and the UN board told me to go, and Chile told me to stay out? I'd be compelled to cross their borders like I crossed yours.'

'I think crossing yours, while it reduced how much vibranium Ultron got, was ill-advised,' Bucky said. 'I wouldn't do it again. If I signed, I'd be giving that choice, and a lot of other choices, up to someone else. What lessons could they ever learn?'

T'Challa nodded, considering this very heavily. 

‘This doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do,’ Bucky went on, regretting the need to. 'One hundred and seventeen nations are participating in the committees. I'm not better than any of those people, you know? I might be cynical, too cynical: a veteran of a horrible war, who rescued a friend from torture, who doesn’t trust the world anymore. I might be too afraid to give you the right advice. I can’t be sure.’ 

'You don't look like a man who is afraid,' T'Challa said. 

'A brave face,' Bucky said, laughing a little. T'Challa gave him a smile; he really was too young for such a burden. Even as Bucky thought that, he couldn't help but also think that the naivete of the young was often what lead and inspired revolutions, what took down the prejudice of the past. 'Take the advice I offer, like you should most people's advice: with a grain of salt, and much consideration of your own.' 

T’Challa nodded, and they sat in silence for a while. ‘I have enjoyed meeting you, Bucky.’ 

‘An honour,’ Bucky said, standing as T’Challa did. They shook hands. T'Challa's grip was warm, firm enough to match Bucky's hyperdense bones and skin. ‘And a pleasure besides, Your Highness.’ 

^^^

Even with the early noise of the city below, it felt like a calm morning. Steve thought he was pretty lucky, to be in a hotel in another country like this. He thought there were more police around this hotel's neighbourhood than others, but he didn't think they were even guarding against him. That happened in some countries, that plain clothes officers would tail him and Bucky, as tho they hadn't both been covert operatives in WWII and since. Today he could hear the noise of the city and was already excited for the chaos of the markets. It was a good morning, as Steve brushed his teeth and made the bed as Bucky got ready for the morning. 

It was such a good morning that Steve didn't think anything of Bucky taking a phone call, turning off the sink but standing in the bathroom. He thought so little he didn't even listen in. 

'Nat and the Avengers are in Lagos, a couple of cities over,' Bucky said, as Steve tucked the comforter back into place. He brushed his hands over it once, smoothing it perfectly, before straightening and turning. It was a hotel bed—he didn't need to make it—but the routine of his mornings was soothing. It could be hard to feel routine when travelling to new places and seeing all new things. Steve liked travelling with Bucky, so he found ways to make it easier for himself. He frowned at Bucky, asking for clarification. Bucky shrugged regretfully in the little hallway but the bathroom and the main door. He tapped his phone into his other palm absently. 

'They picked up a bombing plot,' Bucky said. 'A Nigerian Police station, and a biology lab that studies infectious diseases. The Nigerians are studying preventative medicine, but the germs they use can be instrumentalized by anyone fairly easily.' Before Steve could ask the awful question, Bucky promised: 'The bioweapons lab wasn't breached. The Avengers, uh, defended, rather than avenged, I guess.' 

'But, um. The Nigerian Police arrested someone Wanda got into custody,' Bucky said. 'And the prisoner has agreed to talk, but only if he gets to speak to you first.' Steve crossed his arms. 

'Me?' Steve said. He'd been subpoenaed many times by all sorts of authorities, to cobble together evidence that someone had attempted to destroy, to identify people they believed were HYDRA agents or collaborators, who might have paid for the murders he committed. 'Why?' 

'He saw our visit to Oran on the news in the secure holding in a compound outside the city,' Bucky sighed, shaking his head. 'I'm sorry,' Bucky said, like the news speculation was his fault. Steve had heard plenty of it, before they'd came and since they'd landed. Of course, some of it was excitement at having the opportunity to meet or even spot Captain America in person, but plenty too was sneering that the former Winter Soldier had a right to travel mostly as freely as other United States citizens. 

''S about me as much as you,' Steve mumbled. He sat on the nicely made bed. 

'Well, anyway,' Bucky went on, like he wished he could mumble too, but this mattered too much. 'He knows you're close by, and apparently, he was one of your, uh, close handlers,' he finished, clearly unsure how to name someone who had controlled Steve directly. 

‘Does the name Rumlow mean anything? Brock Rumlow,’ Bucky asked. Steve shook his head. The asset had had no need for names, not really. ‘Do you want to see a photo?’ Steve considered, then nodded. It was a good day. Bucky unlocked his phone, spinning it deftly as he held it out to Steve. Steve looked at the four photos there, two old ID photos, and two security footage stills after the same man had been disfigured somehow. The memories didn't make him squint against imagined bright light or pain anymore; he felt normal, just absent-minded, most days now. All the same, he had to resist the urge to flinch back from the familiar face.

Steve wondered what had happened to disfigure the man like that; he wondered what the man had done to him so that he felt no sympathy for the scars, not even a little. 

‘I know him,’ Steve said. ‘He wakes me up. I don't know where he's done it. I’d have to really think about it.’ Steve pushed the phone away, a little wobbly, like he was watching the picture thru moving water. Bucky took it, settling next to Steve without meeting his eyes. ‘Do you know him?’ Steve asked. He wanted Bucky's voice to make the water go away. It was supposed to be a good morning. 

‘I knew him a little,’ Bucky said. ‘He was on the same ops team as Nat. He sparred with me when SHIELD first pulled me outta the ice, those days when all my joints were stiff and everything hurt. He kept giving me advice about what stretches would loosen up my shoulders when they were cold. He looked at me like he thought I looked nice, but like he also wanted to hurt me.’ 

‘Hm,’ Steve said. He could feel things solidifying into memory he could touch and feel. 

‘What?’ Bucky said, recognising that Steve could feel something changing. 

‘Rumlow?’ Steve asked first, checking the name. Bucky assented. ‘Rumlow liked hurting things. He'd probably have liked hurting you.’

'You know him, huh?' Bucky said. Steve didn't answer for a while. He knew Rumlow, knew his face and could remember the dozens of times the man beckoned for a flat, cold palm to be sliced and tested. He felt something else too, a cold creeping under his skin, a blank sort of terror. 

'I know what stretches he showed you,' Steve said, avoiding the question. He touched his hand to the tips of his prosthetic fingers. Even tho he felt sick remembering, he was grounded. He could feel both hands, perfectly. He wasn't really bleeding. He stared into his open palms instead of meeting Bucky's eyes.

Bucky pressed: 'OK, but, he's not just one of the handlers you recognise; you know him. What is it that's got you looking like that?'

'How do I look?' Steve asked. He curled his hands into fists and he tried to turn them over, to hide the vulnerable tendons and veins visible under his skin. Bucky shrugged. 

'You look scared,' Bucky told him. 'I hate that.'

'You should tell the Nigerian Police I'll sit with Rumlow,' Steve said. 'I'll do it. I'll help.' 

'But you're scared,' Bucky pressed. Steve hesitated. Bucky nudged him with his elbow, kind but urging. 

'He was the first face I’d see after I woke up, sometimes,' Steve said, explaining. 'I don't know how many times he would have woken me. But when any handler defrosts the asset, there’s a whole procedure of warming and protocol testing. After the doctors take out the breathing tube and rinse the asset's eyes, I would have to hold my hand flat, so they could cut my palm with a scalpel.’

‘Jesus,’ Bucky cursed. ‘Why?’ 

‘To see if the asset is warm enough to begin the mission, to see if the asset will resist orders,’ Steve said simply. It used to be nothing to him, to feel the slice and be still. Hearing the way Bucky reacted, cursing like that, spitting out the words, he realised it was barbaric. It was a barbaric way to take someone's temperature. They could have literally measured his temperature and decided what was acceptable; instead, they saw when he would accept pain. 

‘They would recalibrate while I was cold if I didn't hold my hand open, if I pulled away,' Steve said, unable to help himself. He didn't want to give Bucky burdens. 'It hurts a lot worse when you’re cold. But if I was still letting them cut me when I was warm enough to feel the whole pain and to heal it right, then, they’d begin prepping the weapon without recalibrating. They'd recalibrate before freezing again, when my brain was warm, after the mission.’ 

Steve was absolutely certain the sensation of being cut now wasn't real—He'd healed so much; he remembered never being sure, even as an outpatient in New York—but he could feel it like it was. He could feel Rumlow, then just a faceless, nameless handler, pressing his own hand into the neat slashes and designs he’d carved into Steve’s back, pressing and dragging and digging his nails in a little to break a little noise out of the asset, despite the programme’s demand for silence without an order to the contrary. Steve remembered shaking, his palm flat and waiting, bloody but healed. He remembered not understanding why the scalpel cut patterns into the skin, why the handler traced over the leaking, red lines in the asset’s skin, gentle and viscous by turns. 

It hadn't happened then, but now Steve's mind conflated Rumlow’s sadism with tests in Azzano, the scalpel lines with the flaying. 'Hey, what?' Bucky asked, and Steve realised he'd let the same little noise break Rumlow used to search out of him again. 

‘Rumlow liked to cut me all over, not just for wake-up,’ Steve explained. ‘They were supposed to use my hand because extremities warm up last but he just liked dragging the blade against somebody when no one could tell him to stop.’ 

‘I can’t imagine sitting there and letting someone cut me open,’ Bucky said thickly. Steve knew he had a sharpstone in his throat from listening to Steve. Steve hated that he’d put it there. He was allowed to tell Bucky things like this; it was Bucky’s job as his partner or sweetheart or whatever to listen and support, do all the things Melissa said went into healthy love and communication. He knew that, but it made him feel very cold, like his metal bones might be cold enough to stick to, to tell Bucky these things. Sometimes he felt better afterwards, but sometimes whatever it was would just bother both of them instead of making anything change. Steve didn't know how to predict when telling Bucky would make it better. He wished Bucky could make everything better, everything, so quickly. 

‘It’s wake-up procedure,’ Steve said, because that hadn't bothered the asset. The asset was a machine. The pain didn't always mean suffering; one couldn't suffer without their humanity. ‘Other handlers—it would just be—just cutting the hand, and that wasn’t so bad,’ Steve tried to explain. Rumlow had made the procedure worse; Steve had to try to remember it, to fit his hands around something as vague as fog. It was like something missing in his head, a tiny, visible corner of a puzzle. ‘Show me the picture again.’ Bucky unlocked his phone and Steve looked at Rumlow’s face. He remembered that face, maybe, but the vague cloud drifted away, dissipating. Maybe it was nothing at all. 

But no, Steve decided. No, he remembered Rumlow. He remembered Rumlow’s face outside the window of the cryochamber. Rumlow had laid a gentle, careful handprint in red, hot blood in the centre of the asset’s chest, the only part not sliced and bloodied. Steve remembered the look of the sharp red handprint, dripping, the stick of it as it dried, the coppery smell; he remembered the look Rumlow levelled at the asset, intense and heavy and nothing like the way people were supposed to look at weapons. He remembered Rumlow’s fingers on his face. He didn't remember what happened next. He remembered Rumlow's voice, the sound, but had no way of placing the words. 

‘The asset couldn’t even feel the first few cuts; holding the cold hand open hurt worse than the scalpel,’ Steve said, thinking of it. ‘But Rumlow would cut across my back first, or the, um—' Steve stumbled. He couldn't think of it all; parts of every moment were missing. 'He'd cut my back and along my arms. My, um, legs, um, here.’ 

He couldn’t stop the flat of his palm from patting the top of his knee, making sure again and again that the neat squares Rumlow had cut into him there, again and again, were gone. Rumlow would kneel in front of the asset and stroke his palms over the fresh skin before he cut shapes or smeared bloody stripes. He cut the knees like windows, two boxes just inside of another. Steve could remember the horror of the heated look Rumlow had given the asset when it let pained noises break out when there was someone cutting into it between its knees; Steve could remember the asset’s confusion, frozen still and warm, as Rumlow rubbed the asset’s blood into its own skin and stroked the hair back with wet hands so it stayed out of the weapon’s face. 

Bucky’s big hand landed over Steve’s tightly bouncing palm, holding it still and firm against Steve’s knee. Steve blinked at it, and looked up. Bucky was looking away, with the horrible look on his face like Steve had pulled his lungs out thru his mouth. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ Bucky said delicately, seconds before Steve could. Steve dropped his head onto Bucky's shoulder. Bucky settled his cheek on Steve in return. 

‘’S OK,’ Steve promised. ‘I’m alive.’

'Can you do this?' Bucky said after a long moment of simply breathing together. 'You shouldn't have to sit with somebody who used to cut you up. It's awful, to ask you—' 

'I've sat with handlers who did wake-up before,' Steve said. 'I should do this; police always want me to ID people—' 

'No, see, Rumlow just wants to talk to you, trade information for time with you,' Bucky cut in. That was different too, Steve thought. He'd sat with handlers before, but not usually face to face, not usually like this. 'If he used to—You shouldn't have to just sit with someone like him.'

'I shouldn't have murdered people,' Steve replied flatly. Bucky sighed, like he wanted to pick a fight at that. 'I shouldn't have done a lot. I knew, when I accepted the pardon, that this was part of, you know. This is the price I pay.' 

'For what?' Bucky asked. 'Living your life after what happened to you?' 

'For being free when there's blood on my hands,' Steve agreed. Bucky lifted his head from Steve's, moving so he had to lift his head too. He was angry, not at Steve, but at the idea that Steve could still see blood on his hands. It didn't stop him from snapping at Steve:

'What they made you do—' 

'Still,' Steve interrupted. 'It's the right thing to do. Rumlow's fucking crazy. Who knows what he's up to?' He shrugged. He looked away from Bucky's angry face, looking down at his knees. 'If this makes him talk,' Steve tried, then shrugged again. 

'Hey.' Bucky took his hands, leaving the mattress to kneel in front of Steve. 'You don't have to do this,' Bucky murmured. He tried to get Steve to look at him. 

'But I should,' Steve said, even tho he knew he must. He owed it to the people he killed to do everything he could to bring those who arranged their deaths to justice. It was beyond the least he could do. 'If he has a plan that goes off when he's in jail, and if someone could've stopped it, you know? If somebody gets to stop wondering if a missing person is coming home.' He shrugged. 

'Why would talking to you again be worth giving up his plans, or what else he knows?' Bucky asked, suspicious. Steve tried to remember. So much of it was just missing. He didn't know. 

'He liked hurting me,' Steve decided. 'Must be nice to see what you owned in your heydey, after you've fallen, you know?' 

'Jesus Christ, Steve,' Bucky sighed. Steve knew that that part was barbaric; he knew it was barbaric to own someone like they were a tool for labour and slaughter. 

'Nobody owns me now,' Steve whispered. He wasn't sure if he were assuring Bucky or himself. 

'You're sure?' Bucky asked. 'About seeing Rumlow, I mean. You shouldn't have to sit with someone who used to do this to you. I'll—I'll tell them this is too much.' Steve looked up, meeting Bucky's eyes urgently. 

'No, I can do it,' Steve said, even tho the idea frightened him cold to his bones. 'You and I can drive there tomorrow, after we do the markets today. It's our holiday, so Rumlow can wait.' Bucky smiled, slow and sweet. He reached out with his blue hand, cupping Bucky's face. He stroked his thumb along Bucky's cheekbone. 'I love you, you know,' he said. He wondered which of them had been the very first to admit it. 

'You're so brave sometimes that I can't believe it,' Bucky told him. Steve felt himself flush, hot and happy. He bit his lip to hide his embarrassed smile, but Bucky saw it. He gave Steve a grin back, beguiled. Bucky leant up and gave him a kiss.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a cliff-hanger! another chapter of the come home yesterday series' final part. 
> 
> Steve meets with someone in Lagos, to significant consequence.

The Nigerian Police's federal investigation headquarters occupied a beautifully built, secure compound just on the outskirts of the downtown. Bucky had been here once before, and sure enough, the limestone facade was just as impressive as it had been the last time. He kept his nervousness as close to his side as he did Steve as they made their way up the steps to the first set of alcoves that led into the compound. Each alcove had ornately-painted blast doors above every opulently-etched glass door, the second set of glass and blast doors six feet behind every entrance.  
   
When they exited the security building to the first sunny courtyard, Bucky spotted Rashida behind the next building's doors with a small army of men in suits. She spotted him too, and she bowed her chin, apologetic. Bucky could see the stab vests under the men's matching black suits and he read distrust in the visible com units and tasers, in the two men with automatic weapons in hand. He stopped Steve, in the sun for a moment, touching his lower back lightly. Steve was looking at the equally ornate rear arcade of the security checkpoint, at the blue sky and the sunlight beaming and casting a shadow they were about to step out of.   
   
‘Steve,’ Bucky said, garnering Steve's attention before the heat of the light could steal it away. ‘Those guards are for you.’ Steve glanced at them, but then he tilted his face back up to the sunshine, eyes closed and basking. Bucky went on, ‘Look, they’ll probably separate us. I don’t know if they’re going to get you to see Rumlow right away or if they’ll get you to sit tight somewhere.’  
   
‘I hate when this happens,’ Steve admitted. Oftentimes, Steve was isolated when he was subpoenaed, shuffled between enough guards to leave Bucky to trail behind them thru hallways. Bucky remembered the time Interpol had flown him to Montreal and held him in the same type of containment cell they were holding the suspected HYDRA agents they'd hoped Steve could ID. He remembered watching Steve identify three men who wore the same cuffs Interpol had slapped on him. He knew too intimately how sombre Steve got when he was treated like a criminal, how long the mood could linger. It burned at the soles of Bucky's feet, to see something like it happening again. Bucky thought it was wrong, somehow, for people to ask Steve to do something so arduous for him, for their sakes, when they didn't trust him at all. Nevertheless, Steve said, ‘It’ll be OK.’  
   
‘All right, so, um, if you’re in custody and they ask me to speak for you,’ Bucky began, checking once more that this might possibly be anything Steve could handle. He wanted to give Steve one last chance to back out. He could read the tension Steve had been carrying since they were asked to come to Lagos; he wasn't blind that Steve was being foolhardy when he'd said he'd do anything and everything he could. Steve’s eyes flicked between him and the guards, and he shifted nervously. 'Steve?' Steve still hesitated and Bucky was about to urge him again when he finally spoke.  
   
'I don't wanna be alone with him,' Steve admitted, finally laying down some sort of line in the sand.

'You won't be,' Bucky promised him, thinking of what assurances he'd already been given. 'There’s a doctor here to sit with you, a Doctor Broussard, apparently someone who used to work with Melissa a long time ago.' Steve look back at Bucky, away from the guards.  
   
'OK,' Steve said, nodding nervously.  
   
'And if they don't let me in, I'll be watching, you know, when they take you to see him,' Bucky promised. 'If anything feels wrong, you tell me?' Steve nodded.  
   
'It should be fine,' Steve said. 'Rashida's made it safe, I bet. I just—I don't wanna be alone with him.'  
   
'You won't be,' Bucky repeated. Bucky wanted to pull Steve into his arms and make all of this go away. He couldn't. He felt less at ease, with Steve only now admitting any comfort limit, especially one so small. Steve nodded and set them on their way again; Bucky had to follow.  
   
'Captain Barnes,' Rashida greeted when they reached her, shaking Bucky's hand. 'Private Rogers. It's nice to see you again.' She shook Steve’s hand too. Bucky wondered if Steve were as hyperaware of the guards’ eyes chasing his movements as he was. ‘I’m very sorry about this, but certain powers insist.’ Steve didn't say anything. Bucky wondered if he were too nervous to try; he didn't even give Rashida a nod.  
   
‘It’s all right,’ Bucky interjected on Steve’s behalf. He added mostly to the officer at Rashida side: 'but we’d like some assurances that as long as he’s cooperative, that there won’t be any type of restraints.’  
   
‘We can agree to that,’ the security captain said.  
   
Steve gave Bucky one last look before he followed the head officer’s sweeping gesture and let his men fall into rank around him. They marched around him, their hands loose but ready on their guns. Suddenly, it was just they two in the hallway: Bucky and a civilian evacuation coordinator. He wondered what Rashida did in real life when there wasn't a crisis on. He wondered if he had anything he did in real life anymore.  
   
Bucky couldn’t help but picture Rumlow slicing patterns into Steve’s skin. He wouldn’t have to imagine Rumlow getting another chance to be in the same room as Steve. He'd sent Steve to it. Even if nothing went wrong, Steve would be brushing off Bucky’s attempts to make up for this for months.

‘I’m very nervous,’ Bucky confessed to Rashida. She looked up at him, and he felt her follow his gaze to the guards leading Steve away.  
   
‘Certain powers want it to protect from him,’ Rashida offered. ‘I didn't think they would listen so I didn't fight very hard. I just thought, with Rumlow here, doing something of which we don’t know the whole plan, perhaps it is best if Private Rogers—if as few people as possible have a chance to try anything.’ Bucky had to admit that was an advantage, but it came at the cost of making Steve feel like a criminal at best and a frightened animal at worst. It was impossible for him to believe, out of all the people who worked in the compound not one of them were associated with HYDRA in its day, or with the smaller, new terror cells that had risen in the meantime. It was impossible in this world to be sure of that many. He was sure of Rashida. He supposed he trusted the men she did too.  
   
‘Being locked up like this: it’s gonna scare him. I’m not sure scaring him is smart if you think this is a high-risk scenario,’ Bucky said. ‘Can’t I stay with him?’  
   
‘This is beyond me,’ Rashida said. ‘I’m here because they know you like me, and because I know what they’ve decided. I don’t have any power to offer you; this isn't my jurisdiction.’ Bucky stared down the hall Steve had disappeared down; he felt heavy and afraid and sad.  
   
‘That sucks,’ Bucky replied, inarticulate. Rashida laughed sadly.  
   
‘Look on the bright side, my friend,’ she ordered; ‘you and I, together, without a HYDRA base in sight?’ She reached out, bumping his arm. Despite everything, she forced a smile out of him with her cheeky little grin, made far more powerful by the sharp contrast of her dark, dark skin and her bright, perfect teeth. 'This is good, no? It is better, even with these dark clouds!'  
   
‘Oh, these are the good ol’ days,’ Bucky agreed dryly. 'Where are they taking him? Not a cell.'  
   
'No, no, this I could prevent,' Rashida promised. 'No, he's going to one of our secure conference rooms: one remotely controlled entrance, soundproofing. It's isolation, but it keeps him safe. I vouch for the man controlling the door and the four people guarding the hall.'  
   
‘I am glad you’re here, Rashida,' he admitted. 'I'm always happy to see you, no matter the clouds.'  
   
He gave her the warmest smile he could manage. She reminded him of his sister, Eliza; they were both so bright and eager, and they became so quiet and angry when they got frustrated. He remembered seeing Rashida denied the helicopter she wanted for rooftop rescues. Her angry frown had been the spitting image of his eleven-year-old sister and he'd spoken up about the sheer number of residential high rises to get her her support. It had started a beautiful friendship.  
   
' _While we're alone, I will tell you I was not surprised to find out about you and Rogers_ ,' Rashida said, switching to Yoruba. He flushed deeply and swiftly, but the painful twist in his torso he had felt, being outed, didn't rise with her. He felt embarrassed, but softly, gently. He felt flustered the same way one would when friends mocked you for tripping or about mustard on your tie.  
   
' _All right, it's not a big deal_ ,' he said, flapping his hands as if to pull away somehow. He had learned a lot of the language from her, but he knew his accent was heavy and clumsy. He wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed by her support or by how awkwardly he accepted it. Her smile grew cheekier, and she laughed brightly at his blush.  
   
' _I was very happy to hear it as well_ ,' she assured him, almost urgent but so sweet. ' _I've known you since HYDRA was found again and you're happier now. I imagine there are two things to thank: his return to your heart, and HYDRA's real death._ '  
  
'Thank you,' he managed, whispering. ' _I care about him very much_ ,' Bucky said.

' _Good_ ,' she said. He clapped her shoulder briefly, giving her a friendly, little shake. She leaned into his hand, using his grip on her to tug him along in the opposite direction that Steve had gone.  
   
‘ _Come on_ ,’ she said, ordering him again. ‘ _Be brave, because I am with you. It’s time to talk to the powers that be._ ’  
   
‘ _Do you think that Rumlow will confess his plans if we let him talk to Steve_?’ Bucky asked Rashida.  
   
'I don't know,’ Rashida admitted. ‘ _I don’t trust him as far as I could throw the moon, which is to say I can't, and to try to would kill me. But it’s what he’s asking, and while the Avengers think the attack was for the police station, there is a bioweapons lab in the same city._ ' Bucky understood how badly things could have gone, if the lab had been breached and the formerly-eradicated and never-before-seen diseases had been given free reign of the dense, young city. 'If there is a chance he'll speak, we should take it. There is very much riding on this, in my view.’    
   
‘Will he be safe?’ Bucky asked. He flicked his eyes between Rashida’s, searching her for any fear. She looked cautious; that was all. She shrugged.  
   
‘This is a secure compound; no one is in or out this building without passing the alcoves, which we can lock down at any time. Many of the hall junctions have blast doors as well,’ she reminded him, going on: _I don’t vouch for every guard, but I do the guards who have direct access to Steve or Rumlow, or the door controls._ ’ Bucky sighed. That didn't feel like enough; nothing could be enough. He understood why Rashida's superiors wanted so badly to get Rumlow talking, especially with the chatter they'd heard about upcoming attacks in Lagos, the police stations there, the bioweapons lab, the university. He didn't understand why Rumlow wanted to see Steve again, like a weird bribe for answers.  
   
_'I can’t pretend to know what Rumlow might have been planning_ ,’ Bucky said. ‘ _I’ve been living a civilian life; I haven’t been working on anything but the_ online archive _since the_ Ultron _incident. I feel very nervous now that Rumlow is out of hiding_.’ Any other day, he knew Rashida would correct his English substitutions and the way they messed up his amateur grammar, but today she just sighed.    
   
'I know this might come at a price for Steve, speaking to Rumlow. I hope it's not in vain,' Rashida said.  
   
_'Do you think there is any chance this is a trap?_ ' he demanded.  
   
_'Brock Rumlow has been on the run for years_ ,' she said. ' _He took down seven officers, injured two Avengers, and killed one civilian before he was arrested. It was not as tho he surrendered without a fight. We confiscated the beginning materials of a bomb; he had a plan to do something, and it doesn't look like that plan was to end up here. He fought us, tooth and nail_.' Bucky nodded.  
   
He agreed that that was a good sign, that Rumlow had been on his way to some other evil scheme when he'd been caught. It wasn't truly coincidence; it wasn't really chance.  
   
‘ _Steve is willing to speak with him, under supervised conditions_ ,’ Bucky said. He felt better, having asked so many questions of Rashida, but he knew at the end of the day, Steve had already said he would do whatever it took. Like always, if Steve thought he saw a chance to do the right thing, to get justice, he would take it. Bucky didn't get to choose; Steve had already decided. ' _He is not to be alone with Rumlow. Under absolutely no circumstances is he to be restrained when he is with Rumlow. There has to be someone in the room, in addition to the guards you install, whose only job is to call it off if Steve looks like he can't handle it. Obviously, I'd like that to be me, but I understand if you can't swing it. If you can't swing it, I'll watch the security feed with you. We'll call it the second I tell you he's overwhelmed._ '  
   
' _I can set that up; almost everything is a guarantee_ ,’ Rashida said. Bucky knew damn well which demand Rashida wouldn't be able to hack; they probably had a psychiatrist on call, a deprogramming expert if Steve and he were lucky. ‘ _I give my word I will do everything I can to keep your partner safe_.’  
   
‘Thank you, Rashida,’ he said, forgetting the phrase in Yoruba. The serum picked up verbs and declensions so fast; his own human failings forgot little, human details.  
   
‘Ko t'ope,’ she supplied. He smiled gratefully  
   
‘Ko t'ope.'  
  
^^^  
   
Steve had thought that the guards would ask him if he was ready at the door, like Melissa would when she came with him to these types of things. The guards tried to pause, like even Interpol officers, who had put his hands and elbows and feet in cuffs, paused to check one last time that he was lucid and ready. Admittedly, Interpol might've been checking their securities, but they'd still given him a moment to take a breath before facing someone who'd tortured him or used him like a machine. The doctor nodded them on urgently. They simply opened the door and led them in. Steve didn't get a moment to collect himself; he barely got to change his pace as they marched him. Most of the guards settled outside, at their posts. One stayed on the inside of the door that shut behind them. Steve blinked at him for a moment, nervously braceleting his wrist, and then looked at the holding cell.  
   
Rumlow looked different where he sat across the narrow table: seventy centimetres of steel. Half his face had melted and scarred. It looked a little like Steve's left shoulder, the part of his arm that used to sit under metal, that was now exposed above Tony's prosthetic. He knew how painful scars like that could be and he didn't want people to hurt. At the same time, Rumlow had enjoyed hurting him so much. Steve had to imagine he didn't treat STRIKE Team Alpha's other assets much differently than he'd treated the Winter Soldier. Rumlow didn't care if other people hurt; should Steve care if he did?  
   
Steve knew how painful scars could be, and he didn't want people to suffer. He didn't know how he felt about Rumlow.  
   
Rumlow looked up at him, smiling brightly behind his twisted lips, and something shifted under Steve's skin, ugly and foreign and something he'd hadn't known was there. Bucky talked about trusting his gut; Steve had figured he'd always be too afraid of his compulsions to trust any mysterious thought or surety his gut might offer. He trusted it now: it didn't want to hear what Rumlow had to say. His gut told him something was wrong and Steve couldn't make his body move to listen.  
   
'Um, no,' he said. His voice didn't sound right, like it was coming thru a tunnel, not thru his bones. 'No, I shouldn't—' Something was wrong; he could feel something under his thoughts that wasn't supposed to be there. He hadn't felt this bubbling in his head before; something was wrong. 'Shouldn't, um—' The asset couldn't think of the word for what it shouldn't do. Steve couldn't think. It didn't matter; the asset was not able to speak without orders. He didn't know what the asset shouldn't do; he didn't know what he could. _The asset couldn't find words without orders._  
  
_What the fuck?_ Steve thought. He was better than this now; he'd fought and worked so hard to get better than this. How could Rumlow do this to him? He should be able to think for himself; he should at least know what word he was trying to force past his locked lips. Steve had faced down all sorts of HYDRA officials during the commission, and since, whenever someone subpoenaed him for a trial or investigation. He had never felt someone freeze him up like this. He didn't like it. He wanted to get away before it turned into something worse.  
   
'It's all right, Steven,' Doctor Broussard said. 'I am here with you.' Something was wrong; Steve had gotten better, well enough he could say anything he wanted to Bucky, to his other friends, whenever he wanted. He couldn't say anything now. Something was wrong.  
   
'No, I—' He tried to tell the doctor that something was alive in his head, that the programme was gonna kill him after all; surely they'd gotten Doctor Broussard in case something like this happened. 'Um, something's,' Steve tried, reaching out to touch the doctor's forearm. _Please—I’m stuck_ , he thought desperately; _I'm stuck_. Broussard pulled his arm away.  
   
'It's all right, Steven,' the doctor told him. 'It's all right. Go sit.' Steve tried to resist the order, but whatever had gone wrong wouldn't let him.  
   
'No,' Steve whispered, even as he stumbled towards the metal interrogation table. The doctor's hand landed on his back, urging him. He felt a strange, shuttered sensation in his chest, like he was shutting down. He stopped again, dead in his tracks. He tried to say that he didn't want to talk to Rumlow after all; something was wrong. His voice felt stuck. He wished his feet would stick. The doctor pushed him forward again.  
   
'Sit,' the doctor urged. Steve couldn't. If he sat, he'd be at eye level with Rumlow and whatever they'd missed would finish lighting up in Steve's bones and he'd be gone. 'It's all right. Sit,' the doctor repeated. Steve's knees folded him into a chair. He hiccoughed. He kept his eyes down; he had to get out of here but he didn't know how.  
   
'I'm glad we could get together again,' Rumlow said. Steve didn’t recognise his voice; he had thought he would. 'It's so good to wake you up.' The words slid down Steve's spine, like a scabbard shutting him out, away from his nerves.  
   
''M not asleep,' Steve whispered, but he'd meant to say it loudly, loudly enough to knock the shutters in his ribs loose. He tried to drag air into his chest past them. He wanted to shout for help.  
   
'It's so good to wake you up,' Rumlow repeated, and Steve shook his head, trying to get the words off his spine. _'M not asleep,_ he tried to protest. He couldn't speak without orders. 'It's so good to wake you up,' Rumlow whispered again, leaning across the table, reaching his cuffed hands towards Steve, gesturing for him to put his hands up on the table. Steve resisted but he couldn't stand like he wanted to; he tried to push his chair away but he couldn’t do more than tense the anterior muscles of his leg. He recognised the empty, hidden command in Rumlow's words somehow; something in the words held down his thoughts and it was harder to speak than it should have been. His hand wanted to unfurl, palm up, and rest in Rumlow's offered, scarred hand.  
   
'Um. This was a mistake,' he said, because Bucky would be listening. 'I want to leave,' he said, trying to tell Doctor Broussard that they had to go before Rumlow got his claws into Steve's body as well as his head. Doctor Broussard didn't say anything; his hands were linked over his stomach and he was watching Rumlow curiously, like he was waiting to see a magic trick. Something stabbed darkly above Steve's left eye. Steve didn't understand why the doctor wouldn't listen to him; Melissa would have listened if he'd stumbled to a stop like he had, let alone if he'd said something out loud. This doctor had ignored him; Steve realised what that meant. He tried to turn to the guard. The guard could get him out too, surely.  
   
'Look at me,' Rumlow ordered. Steve froze, his attempt to ask the guard for help foiled, that easily. He didn't want to look back at Rumlow, but he couldn't resist the need to angle his head towards Rumlow's voice nonetheless; he kept his eyes at the edge of the metal table. He had to keep his head together, but it wasn't easy. He—he had to remember that he wasn't the asset, wasn't Rumlow's to play with, not anymore. Steve was free and he didn't have to—he didn't have to—no one could force him to do things anymore.  
   
'Look at me,' Rumlow said again, his voice softer, cloying, so much more familiar, so much more impossible for the twisted thing in Steve's thoughts to resist.  
   
He looked up. He had to; he was compelled to look up, but he could barely see past the interference of something he hadn’t known was there. He could feel whatever piece of the programming had been left behind twisting in his chest and thru his head like a thistle vine; he could feel the memory of the asthma attack brought on by his arrest in New York: _panic, and the terrible knowledge that They had come to take him back_. He shook his head again; he'd known he was missing something. He should have known better than to come here. He should have known better than to trust himself, to think he could ever be truly free of the programming.  
   
No. He was a person, at least a little. He could resist this; he could keep a grip on himself. Surely, Bucky was coming. Bucky would be watching on the security camera and Bucky would get him out.  
   
'No,' he said uselessly, defiant even tho he'd already looked.  
   
'It's so good to wake you up, Soldier,' Rumlow praised. The soldier was obedient to Rumlow; the soldier would sit perfectly still when woken and let Rumlow carve lines and shapes into his skin. Steve heard himself whimper; the asset was not supposed to make a noise.  
  
_I shouldn't have come here,_ he thought—He tried to say something; he tried. Bucky had taught him to ask for help even in Hausa and Igbo, but he couldn't. God, he had promised the President that no one could make him do anything anymore; he'd healed so much since then and yet the handler— _Rumlow_ ; Steve wasn't the asset—Rumlow had taken control back without even cutting his head open again. Steve didn't understand; he was supposed to be better than this. People were supposed to be safe. He was supposed to be safe.  
   
He tried to ask for help. Nothing came for weapons.  
   
The lights went out. Steve gasped, panicked. He was trapped. The doctor chuckled then and Steve realised he was more trapped than he'd thought. It was a trap, the whole thing. Rumlow's arrest might have been planned, chatter dropped just where the right people would hear it. The emergency light on the wall engaged, shockingly bright after Steve's eyes had rapidly adjusted to the pitch black.  
   
Doctor Broussard stood then, placing his briefcase on the table as he did. He slid it over to Rumlow before rounding the table, digging in his pocket for keys. The real guard tried to get the door open in the dim, banging for the attention of those on the other side and then jostling the vault-style handles uselessly. Steve didn't understand the guard's voice, but he recognised an attempt to check in on a dead radio easily. Rumlow watched the guard as Steve heard the jangle of keys, saw Broussard reach for Rumlow's wrists. Steve turned in his chair, because he understood what Rumlow was going to do next, and tried to warn the guard.  
   
'Keep quiet, now,' Rumlow ordered, but Steve tried to warn the guard. He tried to tell the man to duck, to do something before the others could take whatever weapon they had from their briefcase. Rumlow's voice was scraping below the ringing in Steve's ears, changing him. He couldn't hear Rumlow but he felt the snapping of the words across his body all the same. Rumlow was changing him and he had to get out.  
   
The guard turned from the door—remotely controlled, Rashida had said, so Rumlow couldn't get out without a person on the outside—and Steve managed to sneak a single sound of warning out to the guard: a vague, useless consonant. He couldn't even tell which one.  
   
The guard turned too late to have time to do anything but look horrified and reach for his own weapon. Rumlow fired. The guard's head exploded into a spray and chunks from some close-range shot, fired from across the table in the small cell. The body fell heavily, dead and dropped and gone, and the asset could not look away. The body fell heavily, his head exploded from some horrible, horrible weapon.  
   
The asset hadn't heard whatever Rumlow had fired; he was too shocked, surprised. His ears started ringing and the asset panicked.  
   
There were chunks of brain and bone all over the wall, all over the asset and the asset's face; a body was leaking a puddle of blood onto the floor. There was wetness on Steve's face too, too much like the splatter on the wall. He touched a drop of it with his human hand; like he feared, his fingertips came back red. A hunk of something solid slid in the wet and fell from his jaw. He saw it where it fell; it was a hunk of brain, the guard's brain.  
   
Rumlow had done something to him with his words; Steve couldn't feel the wetness on his hand. He couldn't tell if the red was warm, if it was blood. The asset did not care and Steve couldn't see or feel well enough. Steve couldn't feel his hands, either of them, and it was getting harder and harder to move his fingers. He tried to stand, but he couldn't do that. He couldn't even feel the warmth of fresh blood, not on his face, not on his hands, not in the blood sheeting his jacket's shoulder. His vision kept going away, to something else's head inside his own.  
   
He was shaking. _Oh, no, no,_ he thought. His brain twisted, hurting; Steve sobbed. It broke out of his chest—silent, because the asset wasn't strong enough to make another noise—and he didn't know what to do. He hadn't felt the programming so strong in his head like this since—since—He didn't know when; he couldn't reach back in time now; he couldn't think back in time.  
   
He should be able to and the fact that he couldn't gave the asset fear. Fear was allowed; fear made the asset docile. It had been a long time since he couldn't think back; he knew that even as he tried. The asset did not want to be with this handler— _Steve_ didn't want to stay with Rumlow and Steve didn't want any more people to die. He had to get away before it was too late, but he hadn't been able to warn the guard. It was already too late. Nothing Steve could do now could bring the man back; Steve couldn't do anything anyway.  
   
His brain was supposed to be better than this. He was supposed to be more human now, less of a weapon, of a machine. He was supposed to be safe from this; people were supposed to be safe from him. What had Rumlow even done to shut him down? He couldn't remember words, not anything Rumlow had said; the sound in his head was empty, just gone. Steve couldn't remember coming here; he didn't understand why he didn't remember. What had happened to Rumlow's face? What had happened to the asset? His arm was blue and impossibly lightweight, with a red frame tracing out his wrist and the elbow joint, the bends of his fingers. He wasn't the asset; the asset's arm was bulletproof and razor sharp. He was Steve.  
   
He stared at the body before him, and a sob hitched in his chest again. The asset was not allowed to show such a weakness. He must not be a weapon, if he could cry. He didn't know where he was; someone was dead because of him and he couldn't even think of where he was. He tried to ask for help. He tried to say _ow_ ; vocalising his pain would let people know they should stop. Someone had taught him that. Steve couldn't stop shaking.  
   
Steve: he was Steve. He looked at the blood on his own hand and his fingers wouldn't stop shaking. There was blood on his face; the asset could feel the blood on his face drip but he couldn't feel the heat of it. He could feel hunks of brain and skull in his hair. He wanted to scream.  
   
'Look at me,' Rumlow repeated. The asset complied. Rumlow rounded the table, free from his cuffs and with the guard dead. The asset followed him with his eyes obediently; Steve tried to look away, to find a way out, somehow. 'You listened so well,' Rumlow praised, and the asset kept listening, compelled. 'It's so good to wake you up. You're going to help us escape, and then you're going to keep listening so well, just like that.'  
   
Rumlow hummed happily, reaching out to smear a thick, slow drip of blood upon the asset's face, tracing red across the line left by shrapnel in another lifetime. He brushed his wet thumb along Steve's lower lip, the slightest slick of blood stopping his skin from catching on the roughest parts of Steve's. Steve wasn't even in control enough to gag as Rumlow painted his bottom lip, thumbed his chin and tilted Steve's face towards him.  
   
'You're so beautiful, you know, like this,' Rumlow told him. 'You look just like you used to, those years you were mine.'  
   
'No,' the asset managed. 'Please. No.' The stomach twisted, sickened by the idea; Steve's stomach threatened to heave. He remembered who he was. Steve managed to glance at Doctor Broussard, who held Rumlow's cuffs, like he'd undone them himself. The doctor was smiling, like he wanted to see how much of Steve Rumlow could force down with just words. Steve didn't understand. Steve felt his head shake no, and Rumlow used a blood-sticky grip on his chin to make Steve look at him again. Steve tried to pull away—he was strong enough to physically break Rumlow's grip—but he couldn't command his muscles to move.  
   
'It's so good to wake you up, Soldier,' Rumlow repeated. Steve felt parts of something that wasn't his rise up, curling towards those words, taking over, slipping Steve's body right out of his grasp. Steve didn't remember this part; he hadn't remembered Rumlow waking up the programme like this, never. He hadn't even known this could happen to him.  
   
He'd known he was missing something.  
   
^^^  
   
It felt like he was in Poland during the arrest, in Croatia during the commission's first session. It felt like Bucky hadn't spent months meditating and reflecting and praying to be at peace at least some of the time; it felt like he was fresh out of the ice and he'd never warm up, not even if he turned the shower handle all the way to the left, as hot as it went. He watched over Rashida's shoulder, leaning against her filing cabinet and gnawing a Red Vine from the bowl on her desk to hide how nervous he was.  
   
There were three cameras in the cell. Bucky had become adept at spotting them; with his superhuman eye, he could find lenses as tiny as they came, often even in fixed footage like this. There were only two angles split on Rashida's monitor, however; one facing Rumlow and one facing the door, the side of the table with two chairs. Bucky stared at the cuffs chaining Rumlow's casual fists to a rung welded into the middle of the table. He felt suspicious of them, like they couldn't possibly be enough.  
   
'Where's the third feed?' Bucky asked.  
   
'It doesn't broadcast. I put it in in case the two cameras our blueprints say we have should somehow fail,' Rashida explained. Bucky smiled to himself, comforted by the idea she had thought of it. 'I put one in every holding cell like this, actually, in case. It runs on battery, is smaller than the built-in systems, houses the data right there, as well as a black box on a plane would. I just thought, you know? Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. Perhaps we will only have extra footage to catalogue.'  
   
'Better safe,' Bucky began, but he fell silent when the telltale buzz of electronic locks sounded across the feeds. The guard went in first, leading the doctor thru the secure door, and then Steve. Steve looked at the guard, and then the doctor, and then looked at Rumlow.  
   
He took three steps into the room—enough for the guards in the hall to shut the door behind him, and the guard to stand a post—before hesitating. Bucky's heart pounded in his chest so hard he thought it might burst out. His Red Vine was gone and he resisted the urge to nervously grind his jaw.  
   
'Um, no,' Steve said, a little tinny to Bucky's ears over Rashida's speakers. 'No, I shouldn’t—shouldn't, um—' Bucky wanted to leap to his feet and shout to the actual security staff across the hall that it was over, to get Steve the fuck out of there—it was less than twenty feet; Bucky could have easily jumped that far if it were a straighter shot thru the two doorways—just from that, but he held himself back. He glanced at Rashida, but she didn't look any more or less worried than she had.  
   
Bucky felt more worried. He hadn't thought he could.  
   
'It's all right, Steven,' Doctor Broussard said. 'I am here with you.'  
   
'No, I—' Steve tried, reaching out to touch the doctor's forearm. 'Something’s—' Broussard pulled his arm away from Steve, almost wrenched it. Bucky felt himself push off the cabinet, onto his feet. Melissa would never do that; she'd never pull away from a patient reaching gently for help. Who the hell was this guy? What kind of reprogramming doctor ignored a patient protesting in such a tiny, desperate voice?

'Rashida,' he said quietly.  
   
'It's all right, Steven,' the doctor told Steve. 'It's all right. Go sit.'  
   
'Why isn't the doctor listening to him?' Bucky asked.  
   
'No,' Steve said again, stumbling.  
   
'He's just scared,' Rashida tried, reassuring, but she'd shifted her weight without realising it, leaning in closer. The doctor reached out, placing a hand on Steve's back, giving him a little urging push.  
   
The little push: it set off alarms in Bucky's head, all sorts of alarms. He wouldn't even push Steve like that, and he was the person Steve was most comfortable with, the person he reacted best to in times of stress. Steve stumbled forward.  
   
'The doctor should be listening,' Bucky said over the doctor's voice, anxious. 'We should call it.'  
   
'Sit,' Doctor Broussard told Steve under Bucky's protest. 'It's all right. Sit.' Steve sat too heavily, like his legs had only binary modes. The asset used to sit like that, like control of his legs was tricky, those few times Bucky had gotten to visit him before Steve was at least a version of himself again.  
   
'I'm glad we could get together again,' Rumlow said. He reached his hands across the table towards Steve. 'It's so good to wake you up.' Steve blinked forcefully, and Bucky could tell he was overwhelmed already. His heart twisted; this was worse than the other summons Steve had received. Usually, Steve went thru physical evidence or records with some nation's recovery teams, looked thru one-way glass towards someone glaring at their own reflection, fully aware who was behind it. Steve didn't usually have to sit with someone who'd once had the power to torture him; he usually didn't look so afraid.  
   
''M not asleep,' Steve said, staring at the edge of the table. He sounded like he did when he woke up reporting, like his brain hurt so much it was difficult to muster the air to speak. The microphones almost didn't pick him up. Bucky thought of the commission; Steve had answered nearly a million questions then and he had never sounded that way from questions, not ever.  
   
When Steve woke up like that, it was hard to snap him out of it enough to get him to recognise and respond to Bucky. He would never have guessed Rumlow could make Steve falter and immure himself like that with nothing but words, but he was one hundred percent certain it wouldn't end well.  
   
'It's so good to wake you up,' Rumlow repeated, and Steve blinked again, that same, heavy shift. Bucky spotted an aborted attempt to shake his head; he remembered the vicious attempts Steve used to make, trying to shake his head hard enough to knock compulsions that didn't belong right out.  
   
'That's code for something,' Bucky said, deciding. He stood fully. 'It's a trigger phrase.'  
   
'It's so good to wake you up,' Rumlow said again, reaching for Steve, and again a blink. Steve's hand twitched toward Rumlow; Steve made to offer his palm: flat, open for a scalpel. Steve clenched his hand hard around his prosthetic wrist to stop himself, even if Rumlow didn't have anything sharp enough to cut him. Bucky realised why Steve held his wrist on the mornings of bad days; he was trying to avoid his wake-up protocols.  
   
'Rashida!' Bucky snapped, because he had had enough now.  
   
'Um. This was a mistake,' Steve said on the monitor. 'I want to leave.' Rashida moved with Steve's words. He followed her out of her office, moving down the hallway as she ducked her head into the security room.  
   
'We're calling it,' she told the officers, and Bucky tried to calm his terrified heart as he fell into place alongside the security captain and Rashida.  
   
'You're a civilian,' Rashida reminded him, as they walked there, appearing at his elbow. He shot her a glance. 'You should stay here.'  
  
'I'm barely a civilian,' Bucky said. It wasn't as tho she could stop him now; the holding cells were down the next hallway. In about thirty seconds and two corners, Bucky would be able to see the door, the one with guards.  
  
'You're unarmed,' Rashida rejoined.  
  
'But if he's fucking with Steve's programming, I'm gonna be our best bet to snap him out of—' Bucky stopped when the power cut; the lights went dim and the air went black. The officers stopped moving; Rashida touched his arm as they all froze. As the power went out, the blast doors of the secure hallways dropped automatically, locking down the facility and trapping them away from Steve. Bucky hoped to God the dropping blast doors trapped the crisis too, whatever exactly it was, where it was, with help on the way. Bucky thought of every security assurance he'd sought before bringing Steve here, and how many of them had just been knocked out with the power. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid, to let them come here. His heart felt like it was going to pound thru the delicate skin of his throat. The power cut and the lights went out; his stomach lost its floor and his heartbeat fell out the bottom; the sudden, near-pitch black frightened him for a moment before his eyes adjusted inhumanly well. The head security officer tried his radio; the tiny unit at his belt didn't give him even static.

The emergency lights didn't even come on.  
  
Steve needed help and the emergency lights weren't even on. In the dark, Bucky could feel every ventricle of his heart beating and pounding against his sternum. For a moment, he thought it might break, again, and kill him. The emergency lights came on after an unbearable and unexpected eighty-three-second delay, flickering for a few moments before staying steady. Rashida almost flew into action, starting up the secondary control panel and trying to override the lockdown procedure for at least one gate. A huge cracking boom rang from the other side of the steel blast gate. Bucky imagined the thick door of the holding cell flying off its hinges and crashing into the floor. Gunshots rang, pinging, and shouting. The security captain called an order to his men; Bucky remembered his role as the worried spouse and stayed to the side. He could get to Steve when the door opened, he told himself. Steve would see him and remember him, Bucky told himself; there was no way Rumlow, whatever triggers he had, could erase Bucky from Steve with a trigger phrase when Steve had come so far. The gunshots didn't stop, but the blast door in front of them clanked, and began opening up.  
  
They rushed, onward, towards the sounds of chaos. Bucky recognised and froze at the sight of the first body. He couldn't remember the kid's name, but they'd been one of the guards Rashida had vouched for. They'd been trustworthy enough to be chosen for this and now they were dead in a hallway. Bucky forced himself to look away, to find Steve.  
  
Bucky saw Steve, blank-faced and fighting. He was savage, mechanical, his face and shoulder were sheeted in someone else's blood, his hair gummed against his head; Bucky felt horrified. Bucky hadn't seen Steve hit anyone since he had struck Bucky into the air on a dying helicarrier. Bucky almost couldn't take in the chaotic scene; he felt like the civilian he wasn't, watching Steve fight like the weapon he had been. Rashida's security team moved past him, into positions, trying to contain the Winter Soldier. The doctor had a gun, using it to ward off snipers on the upper level and aim Steve.  
  
Where was Rumlow? Bucky couldn't focus in the chaos, the alarms, the popping of gunshots, the panic that Steve was so far gone as to _hit_ someone—Police approached Steve and the doctor. One rushed Steve with a stun gun and Steve used the man's own rush to toss him, sending him flying. He hit the wall with a force to cave the drywall; he stayed down.    
  
'Steve!' Bucky shouted. Sure enough, he distracted the Soldier. The asset's head turned to search for him, confused and disarmed for a moment. Bucky saw a guard on the battery aim a sound weapon, and Steve winced, turning back to the fight. Bucky rushed forward, blindly terrified. 'Steve, don't!' he shouted again, trying to get into a better spot, somewhere where the Soldier would have to try to cross him—Steve would snap out of it if they were face to face—Something hit Bucky, biting into his skin and dropping him. He felt it, as he toppled, to his knees and then his back, the bullet, ripping into him.  
  
_Fuck_ , he realized, _I'm shot_. He hadn't been shot since Prague, by a jerry, and Steve had dragged him to safety then. Steve was the one who needed saving now. _Get up,_ Bucky thought to himself, stupidly stunned. He tried to sit, but the tearing sensation across his chest and stomach made him stop, and he lay there like an idiot, blind with pain as the fight moved away from him. _Fuck_ , he thought. _Fuck, how fucking useless can I be_ —Whatever the fuck had gone wrong, Steve had been with some awful doctor with a gun when it had. Bucky had to get to him; he couldn't lay here bleeding and _useless_ when Steve was with a doctor with a mind to hurt him— _I have to get up_ —the shots and the boots of the guards were getting further away. They were getting away, and they had Steve. They had Steve and Bucky needed to stop them; he needed to—  
  
'Hey! Stop, stop, stop!' somebody said, dropping to their knees, as the gunfire kept echoing from the stairwell. Bucky couldn't stop; someone had Steve; some HYDRA fuck had come out of the woodwork after all and Bucky had walked Steve right into the trap. He tried to sit up against the pain and someone pushed him back down. The person said: 'You've been shot in the fucking chest, man; stay down.' Bucky was surprised they could push him down like that, like he was eight and they were his much-bigger parent. The thought made him give up, lay still, and breathe thru the pain.  
  
'Christ, Cap, you've really been shot,' the person who'd pushed him down said, mournfully but falsely light: terrified.   _It's Tony_ , Bucky realised, looking up at him. His vision swam for a second but then Tony's face focused and Bucky could see him. Fuck, maybe he was worse off than he'd thought.  
  
'Tony,' he gasped, and his mouth tasted like blood. Tony spat out a series of curse words, ripping off his jacket. 'Tony.' Tony folded his jacket a little haphazardly, pressing it to the hole—holes, Bucky realised, when Tony pushed down with his hands on different, awful spots buried in Bucky's ribs.  
  
'Sorry,' Tony said, at the noise that broke out of Bucky as he pressed on wounds. Tho he had never before, now Bucky wished his body were more like Steve's: not as strong or indefatigable, but with healing like nothing else; he wished he could stop this bleeding in minutes, reject the bullets in an hour, and be back to full strength after six more. He wished he could heal quick enough to go after the people who'd stolen Steve, right now, heal quick enough to risk getting up thru the pain, to trust that the bleeding would stop and whatever else would heal when it could. 'Hey, hey.' There was a voice nearby. 'Come on; hey.' Bucky realised Tony was talking to him still. 'Focus up, bud; you with me?'  
  
'Yeah,' Bucky said, and a second of relief rushed over Tony's face, under the wicked bruising around his left eye, the broken skin of his cheekbone. Bucky wondered how long he'd been unresponsive, staring after the disappeared chaos, over two bodies of the guards who'd manned the door; he hoped it were only moments, not a minute, not three; someone had to have a chance of stopping them. Bucky wondered if the guard inside the holding cell was dead too. If he could turn his head, he could see; he tried but the effort burned so badly he stopped. He wondered if they'd made Steve do it, made him shoot these people, start killing again. He wondered if Steve had shot him. They couldn't have made Steve shoot him, right? Steve had never shot him, could never have shot him. 'Who shot me?' Bucky asked, desperate.  
  
'I don't know,' Tony said, 'but they sure got you, huh?'  
  
'Didn't bring my shield,' Bucky said, and he coughed a bit, sputtering. The air tasted like blood on its way out; it frightened him. He hadn't been shot like this in a long time. He tried to lift his leaden hand; he landed it on Tony's wrist, low on his sternum, hanging on, feeling Tony's pulse like an assurance that somehow they'd all be OK.  
  
'Was on holiday,' he babbled. He and Steve had gone to a farmer's market in Oran and eaten fruits Bucky had never seen before. 'I didn't think I'd need it,' Bucky said crazily. He hadn't thought he'd needed his shield; he'd walked them right into this and he should have seen it coming.  
  
'Holy fucking Christ,' Tony cursed as he shifted his hands. He didn't take Bucky's hand, but Bucky could feel his blood soaking thru Tony's jacket so he didn't take it personally. The gunfire had stopped, but alarms had started sounding somewhere else too, distant enough to be from other buildings in the compound. Bucky hated himself; all he could do was try to listen to Tony's voice and try to breathe. His fingers slipped off Tony's wrist. He tried to—to stay awake and to hold on.  
  
'Can you call for a medic?' Tony asked. 'I'm jammed.' Bucky was about to say, _no, I can't move_ when he opened his eyes—he'd closed them?—and spotted Rashida kneeling over him too. Her arm was bleeding and she clutched a giant, handheld radio, like AM eighty-meter-band was the only thing that could make it past whatever jammers had sprung up. The main power had come back on, Bucky realised, and he hoped it was in time to trap Steve somewhere Bucky could get to him. She touched his neck, measuring his pulse.  
  
'People without a serum, first; triage them first,' Bucky protested, and he was ignored. 'Where's Steve?' His voice was too soft. Maybe they hadn't heard him; maybe he had to speak up. He tried to breathe deep enough to speak loudly but the breath burned and he gurgled. He gurgled and the mere thought made him gag around the hot blood rising in his throat. He coughed red, turning his head away from Tony's knee best he could, which was barely.  
   
'Do you have a suit?' Rashida asked, speaking over Bucky's pathetic coughing. It hurt; he couldn't do it with enough force to get his throat clear enough to breathe well.  
  
'Yeah, a three-piece Tom Ford. It was very nice,' Tony replied flatly. 'You see how well this season's silk blend pairs with _blood_.'  
  
'I'll send medics,' Rashida said, standing and going away, even as Bucky heard her calling him in as an officer down. Bucky coughed again and Tony matched him with another curse, lifting one of his hands for a second and then renewing his swears.  
  
'I didn't mean to get shot,' Bucky told Tony. He felt dizzy, even tho he was sure he was lying still. 'I just—I thought I could get to Steve.'  
  
'Didn't mean to get shot,' Tony grumbled. 'I got you, Buck; it's OK.'  
  
'Who shot me?' he asked again, hoping it was the doctor, in whatever world that made sense in. He hoped Steve hadn't shot him. He hoped Melissa and her team hadn't left a trigger in his head big enough to make Steve shoot Bucky. Tony shook his head. Bucky hoped that meant he didn't know. He didn't press for answers. 'Tony, they've got Steve.'  
  
'Maybe they didn't make it out,' Tony offered, but Bucky didn't believe it. Bucky couldn't believe he'd failed Steve so badly. The alarms had all stopped, wherever they had been sounding, replaced by a woman's voice on a Tannoy. Bucky couldn't make it out; he was drifting thru something else. 'Hey, stay awake. Stay with me, man.'  
   
''M here,' he whispered. Somebody patted his face and that voice came thru again: _stay awake, stay with me, buddy._  
   
''M here,' he mumbled. Somebody had put something on his face, like a muzzle, like a mask. He tried to push it away but he couldn't even lift his arms enough. 'Howard, 'm here,' he complained. Somebody grappled him when he tried to reach over his chest to take whatever it was from his mouth. ''M right here,' he tried, calling to someone, but his voice didn't reach or raise.  
   
'Buck, leave it; let them get you ready to move,' the voice snapped. It sounded scared and angry, a little like Bucky used to way back when, when Steve would come home bleeding from a fight and would take so long to stop that Bucky would work himself into a rage.  
   
'Ready?' someone else said, and he was lifting and jarring and the pain in his chest swelled and screamed and tore thru him. He should've known better. They'd missed something; Steve had warned them that they were missing something. He had had nightmare after nightmare always ending with the same vague details and then that little voice Bucky hated so.  
   
Bucky should have listened.


	6. Chapter 6

He could feel himself shaking.  
  
He tried to, but he couldn't feel enough to know if he were shaking from cold or fear. He shook so hard he almost couldn't hear the shouting around him. He realised there was shouting around him; he realised the shaking was coming from his body. He was real, awake, alive: human. The asset did not exist without a mission but here he was. He could see his own hand, curled loosely by his face. Someone was shouting. He had to see past his hand to find the threat, the shouting, but he couldn't make his eyes focus when he took control enough to move them. He tried to get a grip on the shapes and images in front of him; he could see his fingers and nothing more. His hand laid against something and he couldn't even feel the other one. He tried to get a grip on his own shaking limbs. He didn't understand how he'd been separated from his senses.  
  
He could hear the sound of his own breath.  
  
The asset had to think; he forced himself to relax. He forced himself to pick apart his surroundings like it was normal that his body was ticking along without him. He lay on a wiry mattress and a ragged top sheet. There were damaged filing cabinets near his head and a desk with broken drawers at the foot of the mattress. He realised he was in the back office of a warehouse, some abandoned place that was rank with mould and years-old smoke damage. Part of the wall leading to the office was mere ruin after whatever fire had ripped thru; behind the half-wall of rubble, he could see two men. He tried to see where he was. He lay below a boarded window; it had been boarded from the inside and with fresher wood than anything in the building. Was that good or bad? Was this place long abandoned and taken for use, or is there a new security guard only now boarding things up, unaccounted for but eventually scheduled to find them?  
  
He could see into the next room, most of the room. He blinked too hard, squeezing his eyes shut enough so that when they opened they focused better. The two men were arguing in the main room over a folding table, cataloguing weapons and watching code flicker on laptops.  
  
'He wouldn't take orders, and if he won't take orders, what's this all been for, eh?' someone shouted, raging. 'If he'd taken orders, we could've recovered the detonators—' He smacked his hand into a pile of folders; the papers scattered angrily. The asset watched them flutter.  
  
'He took orders, Helmut,' another man replied. 'We have him; he's the weapon we needed. Quiet down.' The man was facing away, but the asset knew his voice. It terrified him; it made him curl up tight and try to turn into the mattress like it might be a shield. He tried to place the voice in his memory. He tried to find anything, but he had only the vaguest images and feelings. 'He's here, isn't he? Look at him; he's not even cuffed.' The first man scoffed. The second went on: 'He won't move, no matter how long we leave him there.'  
  
The asset wondered who they meant; he wondered if a third man was lurking behind him, with a blade or a whip or a thin cane. He tried to look around again but it was stuck. The second man went on. 'He'd lay there if we burned the place around him.' The asset felt a sinking sensation in his chest; he realised he was the third man; he was a person and he was trapped in his own head. He prayed to God that the man was wrong, that he'd be able to move soon, that he'd be home and safe with someone else. He couldn't remember the someone else's name. That petrified him so badly the shaking nearly stopped. He gasped. He wasn't supposed to be here; he didn't want to be alone with someone like Rumlow; he was supposed to be home with someone who made him feel safe, whose name was trapped in a gritty void.  
  
'We needed more than passivity, and you know that,' the first man snapped. 'We needed a weapon and you brought us a pet!'  
  
'So we'll get the other weapons,' Rumlow said, unconcerned. Steve remembered his name and he realised he was terribly trapped, even more than he'd thought. He hadn't realised he was with Rumlow; fear snaked thru him like a cold front. 'Don't doubt the programme where it can see.' The programme heard something whimper.  
  
Rumlow rounded the table, ignoring the angry, tracking gaze of the other handler. He crossed to step over the little wall's remnants, into the mockery of safety of the back office and the boarded window, crouching and then sitting next to the asset on the mattress. The asset tried to sit up, so his feet were flat, ready to run if he needed to get away. Rumlow was coming closer and he would need to get away. There wasn't even a pillow to hide his face behind. There wasn't a third man other than him; he could try to bolt away from Rumlow and the other man; he was faster than people were; he could maybe do it if he could just move.  
  
He tried to move even an inch but he just managed to twist his feet where they lay over a filthy sheet. Moving without permission hurt; the shock down his spine made him open his chest, involuntarily, when he'd tried to hunch and curl away from Rumlow. It hurt enough to broker another whimper from his throat.  
  
'Hello there,' Rumlow greeted. Steve met his eyes, recognising the order behind the cooing voice. He wanted to run; he wanted to go home.  
  
Steve couldn't run. Something in his head wouldn't let him. He squeezed his eyes shut, but he realised it wasn't a relief. It was scarier, not to see Rumlow. He didn't know Rumlow had reached out until he could feel a rough hand stroke over his hair. His hair was tacky with something and he couldn't remember what, just that it disgusted him. The same tack covered almost a whole half of his face and he didn't know what it was. He kept his eyes closed so he wouldn't have to see Rumlow up close; something about Rumlow would make him remember. He tolerated not knowing; maybe Rumlow had a scalpel. It didn't matter; Bucky was coming and this would end. He was at the compound in Nigeria, after all, and Bucky said he'd be looking in on the cameras.  
  
'Help,' he whispered, and someone stroked his hair. Bucky was coming and he'd stop Rumlow from touching Steve like this, like Steve was a loris he loved. He hoped he asked for help out loud; he hoped Bucky heard him. Someone had to stop this and Steve had been separated from all but enough of his senses to be afraid.  
  
Rumlow's touch was gentle; it was a lie. Steve tried not to whimper again. He tried to hide how frightened he felt. He had thought this part of his life was over: lying still without restraints and waiting for someone to hurt him, for someone to direct him to hurt someone else. Steve had gotten all his strength since he'd come back by remembering that _this_ was over, that it wasn't going to happen again. He'd promised himself on so many scary nights that he was free and no one could make him do anything he didn't want to, not anymore. He'd pushed thru his worst days by promising himself he'd never face wake-up procedure and handlers again.  
  
'Look at me,' Rumlow demanded. The asset did, his eyes opening against his will. Rumlow looked awful close-up, and he looked worse grinning like that. He had a splatter of blood across his warped and scarred face, a well-distributed spray, like he'd been further from the—Steve realised what he was tacky with. He surged forward—he managed to roll an inch—to gag, let bile roll out of his mouth, and the movement let him see his clothes, stained with what would have been soaking with blood. _Oh, God,_ he remembered what happened. He remembered the guard, shot at close range with some type of special gun: his head and neck had exploded and there hadn't been a chance for him to defend himself, let alone—no matter where he'd been shot he'd have been blown into oblivion at such close range. Steve had just let it happen; he'd allowed it.  
  
'Do you think you're awake?' the handler asked him. Steve considered. That was a possibility, he realised. He looked at Rumlow's awful face. He _hoped_ ; maybe this wasn't happening because maybe he wasn't real. Maybe this wasn't real. He hadn't really been taken from the safety he'd gotten used to; maybe he simply wasn't real right now. He was supposed to be better now, to be fixed from how HYDRA had shattered him; he was supposed to exist. He hadn't thought it would be possible for Rumlow to compel him to answer a question, but Steve felt the question burning. His mouth spoke without him.  
  
'No,' he admitted.  
  
'Do you know where you are?' the handler pressed. The asset glanced past him, sweeping an eye over the incomprehensible, dank space behind him, trying to give a good report. It wasn't Zola's lab; it wasn't Azzano; it wasn't the room where it used to be locked in the dark that was too small to move; he didn't know. 'Where are you?'  
  
'Nightmare,' the asset whispered, compelled. He tried to pray for help but he didn't even know where to start.  
  
'Weapons do not have nightmares,' Rumlow told him. Steve felt like he was being stabbed. He tried to touch his chest, to check for blood, or at least new blood, to make sure the pain was just in his head. He couldn't move. He hoped Rumlow wasn't driving a knife slowly thru his sternum into his lungs. He didn't want to die. He didn't know if he could. He couldn't tell if the feeling was real or not; he didn't know if _he_ was real or not. 'You belong to HYDRA. We built you from nothing.'  
  
'No,' Steve tried. 'No,' he said again, insistently. He was a person, not a weapon, not a machine. _If you want me to forget that,_ Steve thought angrily, _you're gonna have to cut it out like last time_. He tried to spit those words into Rumlow's face. If Rumlow wanted him to hurt people again, he'd have to hurt Steve much worse than this, than whatever was hiding in his head, in his nerves. Steve might be stuck from the pain, but he was stronger than Rumlow; he wasn't gonna hurt anybody. He couldn't remember how he got here, but he felt defiant now and he wasn't going to hurt anybody. He hoped he hadn't hurt people already.  
  
Steve had been torn down to nothing before and he hadn't fought so hard to build himself up to let Rumlow take him back without a fight. He wasn't going to surrender to Rumlow, even when his hands were touching Steve and he couldn't feel enough to know where.  
  
'There aren't other weapons,' the other man cried, trying to draw the handler's attention from the asset—from Steve. 'Great, he thinks he's in a nightmare; we could have blown the UNEOB building to fucking smithereens!'  
  
'Zemo,' Rumlow purred, like a warning. It was so obviously a warning that the asset shrunk back; Zemo raged on like a fool, like someone who'd never been shot at, turning to see what the explosive pop had been.  
  
'We would have a hope if he knew any of the things you said he'd know! If he could point at this _fucking_ map and show us like you fucking said he would. We barely shut him down; we _barely_ got him into the van—'  
  
'You would do well to speak only of an obedient and lovely machine in front of the weapon, Helmut,' Rumlow said, his voice sharp enough to carve. 'I won't tell you again.' He stroked his hand thru Steve's hair again, gentling thru natural little knots on the side not drenched in awful. He looked up in time to see Rumlow's mouth move at him, soundlessly, artificially soundlessly. His ears rung in place of the same words he should have been able to hear in his nightmares, the same words he couldn't remember hearing in the cell. His brain twisted sideways and Steve blinked tears out of his burning eyes. He couldn't see; something was forcing him out of his own head. He didn't understand. He was supposed to be better; he was supposed to be safe. He prayed this wasn't real.  
  
The asset became aware. Steve was gone.  
  
^^^  
  
Bucky woke up.  
  
He was breathing. It hurt enough to wake him.  
  
He fought his way back to sleep.  
  
He woke up again and he could tell he hadn't moved. His body was heavy with settled blood, with heavy sleep and the grossly familiar, thick exhaustion of the serum overriding his human functions to fix the impossible. He woke up in the hospital. He blinked at the ceiling and listened to the steady beeping now attached to his heart. He wasn't dead, at least, even if the rising swell of pain had been what had woken him. Dead men felt nothing.   
  
He heard a page turn, and he moved his eye as little as he could, looking. Sam sat in the pink, pleather chair with metal arms, feet up on one of the lower rungs of the hospital bed. He looked far more comfortable than anyone in a hospital had a right to. He was reading a slender paperback, nonfiction, about some sort of aerial physics.  
  
'Nerd,' Bucky croaked. Sam looked up, and his face broke into a beam.  
  
'Hey, sleeping beauty,' Sam chirped, closing his paperback with his forefinger holding his place. He tucked the soft book into his chest as he leant in, his other hand touching the back of Bucky's forearm. Bucky looked; his hand had an IV in it. Sam's voice arrived in his head, distant, thru aching lungs and ribs and heart: 'Hey, how you feel?'  
  
'Not so bad,' he lied, because he remembered how bad he'd felt before he'd went numb on the floor with Tony. The pain was more diffuse now, easier. Bucky knew he wouldn't die from it; it would be easy enough to ignore if his worried heart could calm down and if the pain would let him relax his shoulders a bit. The pain made him tense more and he tried to relax; he couldn't. 'Hurts, but it's not as bad as I thought it'd be.'  
  
'Yeah, Tony said it looked rough when he called,' Sam said soothingly. Bucky was not to be soothed.  
  
'How am I doing?' he asked. Sam told him, and Bucky listened while focusing on the comforting rhythm of Sam's hand against his arm. The touch didn't hurt and he focused on that.  
  
'He said the bullets entered and exited your lungs at different angles, and one transected a vein,' Sam told him, frank. 'The doctors didn't know how to give us an assessment of risk or complication; your serum was the only reason you lost that much blood without dying or asphyxiating, but it almsot killed you trying to reject your broken ribs.'  
  
'You're good now, tho,' Sam added, reaching out and patting Bucky's head momentarily, like he really had been worried. Bucky wondered if he really had come close to dying.  
  
'Tony OK?' Bucky asked instead. He swore he could feel which ribs had been shattered, slowly knitting themselves back into a whole, or growing new pieces to mend gaps.  
  
'Yeah, they're already looking for Steve,' Sam promised, 'trying to track down Rumlow.'  
  
'Any news?' Bucky asked. Sam shook his head. 'How long's it been?'  
  
'It's been about a day, day and a half since you got out of surgery,' Sam said, avoiding the real question. Bucky realised Rumlow had gotten out; he'd gotten out of the compound Bucky had been promised again and again was secured, in a city with extra police presence and temporary CCTV. 'They thought you'd sleep longer.' Bucky didn't say that the pain had woken him.  
  
''M really tired,' Bucky admitted, the words coming out almost against his will. The blankets were too heavy and he was so tired he felt like lead. It was an unusual feeling. He only got this tired on missions, after too many days of fighting and nights of keeping watch or walking patrol. He tried to budge up, sit more, and he gasped, regretting it. Sam stilled him and shushed him, rubbing his arm, and fiddled with something out of Bucky's reach, raising the bed slowly. 'This is such bullshit,' Bucky gasped, because even if the bed moved him it still hurt. The blanket fell down his front a few inches as the bed rose him up; the blanket tore across his wounds and it raked pain across his nerves. He felt like crying. 'How bad? How bad is it?'  
  
'You were hit twice thru the right lung; your ribs tore you up but good when they broke,' Sam began, and Bucky would have rolled his eyes if he could.  
  
'No, not me,' he grumbled, because the serum would fix that. He'd hurt for a while but he'd be on his feet faster than any human could be. 'How bad?'  
  
'Rumlow killed eleven people on the way out,' Sam told him, without hesitation once Bucky pushed. 'The guard in the holding cell with Steve, and two of the four in the hall. Seven Nigerian police officers were killed by bullets or grenades; Rumlow ran over a secretary in the parkade, with an armoured car. Bunch of injuries, mostly minor: cuts, broken bones, concussion. You and only four others haven't been discharged yet.' Bucky hated every detail but he would have hated it more if Sam had tried to obfuscate how disastrous Rumlow had made things.  
  
'Is Rashida OK?'  
  
'Some sutures; she took shrapnel from a concussion grenade. She's running the local point,' Sam offered. 'Thinks she's got a good idea of where they've taken him. The Wakandan Crown Prince stopped by, too. You're a big deal.'  
  
'T'Challa's a pal,' Bucky murmured, tired enough to let his eyes drift shut for a long moment. His exhaustion made each of his inhumanly dense limbs feel inhumanly heavy, like he was made out of tired, tired lead. He should be feeling urgent past the overwhelming pain; he should be storming and finding and searching out Steve. He should have called it. He should never have let them come here.  
  
'He says he's looking too,' Sam told him softly, stroking his arm a little, too obviously hoping Bucky would drift back to sleep to heal. It was so tempting. Everything hurt but it wouldn't hurt in sleep. 'Told me I should bring you to visit once Steve is home.'  
  
Steve. Bucky hummed tiredly in acknowledgement of Sam's words, but a fresh throb of pain made him try to shift, to relieve it, and he opened his eyes to frown at Sam.  
  
'Where—Are we still in Nigeria?' Bucky asked. Sam nodded. 'You flew to Nigeria?'  
  
'You were shot twice in the chest,' Sam said flatly. 'Of course I fucking flew to Nigeria. You think I'm gonna let you wake up alone after something like this? You think that of me?'  
  
'Nigeria's far 's all,' Bucky murmured.  
  
'Yeah, well,' Sam shrugged, 'you'll be up to walking after you sleep for another day or two. Once the doctors give you the OK, we'll go back to the States. Get you home.'  
  
'Is that where they think Rumlow took them?'  
  
'Yeah, but that's the other thing,' Sam said. 'It wasn't Doctor Broussard.'  
  
'What?' Bucky asked, confused.  
  
'It wasn't Doctor Broussard,' Sam repeated.  
  
'How's that?' Bucky asked again. 'What do you mean it wasn't—'  
  
'The man they sent in wasn't a doctor,' Sam told him heavily. Bucky stared. Sam shrugged, helplessly, like he knew how fucking awful that was to say out loud.  
  
'He was a fake; he faked the system somehow. It was never Doctor Broussard.' The image of the doctor pulling away from Steve leapt into Bucky's mind; he should have known immediately. He shouldn't have waited until Rashida called it; he should have barked an order at her in his Captain's voice and dealt with the consequences of overriding and disrespecting her with Steve at his fucking side and zero people dead. He felt nausea deep in his chest, a rising tide under the more potent pain.  
  
'Where was Broussard?' Bucky asked, torturing himself. 'The real one.'  
  
'Murdered on holiday in Berlin,' Sam said.  
  
'Then who—how—?' Bucky didn't understand. Maybe it was the exhaustion or the pain, but he didn't understand. He didn't want to believe it.  
  
'Someone called Helmut Zemo,' Sam told him. 'Formerly Sokovian Special Forces. I don't know how he passed as Broussard thru the AI security, but he scammed it somehow.'  
  
'Fuck,' Bucky said. He wanted to wipe his eyes but he was afraid of trying to move arms again; every muscle in his chest hurt. 'Fuck, Sam, this all so fucked. Things were just getting to be normal, and now everything's fucked.'  
  
‘We’ll find him, Bucky,’ Sam promised. ‘We’ll find him and it’ll be OK.’  
  
‘Sam,’ Bucky said, but it really sounded like he was crying; the name broke out of him like a sob. Sam tightened his grip, shaking Bucky a little. He couldn't believe he was crying. He needed to pull it together; he was stronger than this. He was meant to be more in control of himself than this; he was meant to have a grip on things and not to let harm befall those he loved. He was meant to be _better_.  
  
‘I know, man; I know,’ Sam said.  
  
‘I promised him that he would never go back,’ Bucky whispered. ‘I promised and now I’ve let them take him.’  
  
‘You didn't let anything happen,’ Sam said firmly. ‘You didn't let anyone have him; someone saw the chance to get him and took it. Took him.'  
  
‘If they’ve wiped him even a little, I’ve failed,’ Bucky said. He wasn't willing to be comforted. He stopped crying at least; his eyes streamed when he blinked tears out of them but he had to stop sobbing. He couldn't cry like he wanted to in front of Sam, no matter how woozy he felt, and besides: sobbing hurt his broken chest like the wounds were fresh all over.  
  
‘How many recalibration machines do we think are loose in Africa?’ Sam asked.  
  
‘I don't know. Two. Maybe one. Fuck, man,’ Bucky said. Even considering the mountains of data and files he'd dug thru, there were gaps. He couldn't be sure if there were two machines or if HYDRA and its allies had moved only one machine between Cairo to Johannesburg like they'd occasionally shipped a full cryotube to other governments or terror cells. He couldn’t afford to break down, not when Steve needed him, and not when hitching his shoulders hurt so much. Sam's hand stroked his arm softly, comforting and watchful like everything Sam did.  
  
'It'll be OK,' Sam said. It was useless, Bucky thought, as he closed his eyes. They were heavy. Breathing hurt. His chest hurt. His eyes burned with tears and he tried to take a deep breath.  
  
'He's gone,' Bucky whispered. 'I let them take him back. It'll never be OK again.' Sam said something else, but Bucky's eyes were closed and the words were only a murmur. His eyes went heavier and heavier. He fell back asleep, and for once, he didn't dream, not even a flash.  
  
^^^  
  
Brock watched Zemo cross the lawn and amble his way up the porch, playing the role of a Midwestern fool perfectly. Brock could make out the nervous shadow of one of HYDRA's old guard, men snuck into countries around the globe in their retirement to hide their deeds while waiting to see them all pay off. Brock couldn't stop his knee from bouncing excitedly as he watched Zemo rub the back of his head, cursing like a driver would, on the porch of someone whose car they've hit.  
  
Brock looked away from the scene on the porch; he'd written it. He knew how it would end. He looked across the bench seat of their sedan at Rogers. Rogers wasn't hunkered like he had been meant to; Rumlow didn't think it would matter, with Zemo laying the con so well outside. Brock reached out, stroking Rogers' too-long hair back so he could look at the dark, dried blood still splattered on Rogers' pale skin.  
  
'You're a different kind of terrified now, huh?' Brock said, almost to himself. The Soldier let him card his fingers into his hair but watched him carefully; the wariness was new, like the Soldier had only just learned Brock was dangerous or that his presence promised pain. The tracking gaze lit Brock's bones deep and warm. The Soldier did not protest when Brock curled his fingers to get a harsh grip on his hair. 'You used to be made of fear; I had nothing to do with it and I had to really look to see. You're different now. It's better,' he added, like he was hurrying to explain away an offence to his intended. ''S like you're afraid now 'cause you know you can exist without pain, and you know I'm going to change that.' He turned his grip gentle again. He could read the confusion on the Soldier's face even as he leant into Brock so his fingers would catch fewer tangles as he stroked. He petted Rogers' head for a moment before pushing his fingers into Rogers' hair again, getting a thick, full grip.  
  
'Mn—buh,' the Soldier said, a vague, useless, petrified sound like everything else Brock had gotten out of him since he'd shot the first guard. He looked back at the porch, tightening his hand until he heard the Soldier make a tiny noise of discomfort. He pulled, urging the pained noise again, as Zemo said something else, calling out and then tossing his hands as if to say: it's out of my control. There was a pause Brock could feel from his hunkered position in the car. The tension excited him; he twisted his hand a bit in Rogers' hair as the safehouse's front door opened a crack.  
  
Zemo forced it the rest of the way, taking the inch of opportunity, snapping the chain, and smashing his fist into the Colonel's face, again and again and again and again. Brock felt his face break into a grin as they tumbled inside.  
  
'Come on,' he said, giving Rogers a little shake as he pulled, dragging the Soldier across the small distance between them on the bench seat, pushing his door open and letting go of Rogers' head when he stood. The immediate neighbours on both sides and directly across were all out of their homes at the moment, but Brock swept his eyes this way and that nonetheless. He pulled his Glock from the front of his pants and he pressed it to the asset's ribcage, crowding him against the open car door for a moment. The asset stared up at him with teary blue eyes.  
  
Brock couldn't wait until he had the time to make this kid bleed.  
  
'Come with me,' he ordered, in case whatever fucking Barnes had done to undo all of HYDRA's hard work gave him any ideas about escaping. 'You go inside like nothing's on, or I put a bullet in your fucking lungs,' Brock said, using a hand on Rogers' back to push him towards the ancient porch.  
  
He tugged them thru the doorway. Zemo closed the door behind them and Brock let go of the Soldier. The Soldier looked at the unconscious man on the floor but did not move from where Brock let him go, standing near the empty umbrella stand and looking like he was frozen in time.  
  
Zemo grinned up at him, proud where he knelt over the bound form of the Colonel. Brock glanced around the musty, dim home. He had heard stories of the Colonel, knew some of the amazing things he'd made the Winter Solider do, but Brock couldn't imagine dying for HYDRA in a dusty hole like this. There wasn't enough of HYDRA left to justify dusty trophy cases like this. What was left was for Rumlow, and he planned to take what was his.  
  
'That's him?' Brock asked unnecessarily, kicking the leg of the unconscious man lightly, not enough to move it but enough to rock his foot at the ankle. 'This is the Colonel?'  
  
'The one and only,' Zemo agreed. 'He handled the Soldier for fifteen years. If the Soldier won't tell us, it's because the Colonel won't let him.'  
  
'So the Colonel is all I need to find out how to control my squad?' Brock asked. Zemo shrugged.  
  
'Well, to lead us there, sure,' Zemo agreed, still believing Brock could ever let him destroy something like the Winter Soldier, let alone five of them.  
  
Brock smiled to himself as Zemo began to turn to the house, beginning to describe the files they should be after as well. It had almost been too easy, to convince an independent radical to trust him, to use his resources to find this final clue which had been missing for so long. It had been so easy to take someone obsessed by the secrets the Avengers spilt and turn him like a compass to true north. It had been nothing to convince him fighting for HYDRA would protect him.  
  
Zemo turned his back to Brock, away from the former handler on the ground, and Brock fired a silenced round into him.  
  
Zemo dropped to his knees on the living room rug, making a horrible sound as he did. Brock fired into his back again, lower, knocking him the rest of the way down. He writhed once he'd hit the ground, twisting on his stomach and groaning.  
  
'Hold, soldier,' Brock warned when the asset scrambled past Rumlow, on its knees before he could say anything. The asset dropped to the living room rug despite Brock's warning, sliding it a little from under the weight of the sofa. Brock glanced at the heavy, flat circle where the sofa foot had rested on rug fibres for decades.  
  
' _Hold_ ,' Rumlow said again, as the asset made to stop the bleeding. This time, the Soldier's hands froze in midair, one over each of the two spreading stains on Zemo's back. He watched Rogers' face carefully. The asset used to stare with quiet, terrified eyes, even from behind its muzzle or cryogenics mask, feigning a perfectly neutral disposition while looking up at Brock like he was the most powerful monster ever to rake a scalpel across his skin. Brock didn't need to imagine the asset's fear anymore; he could see it clearly etched into the human expressions that had been cut out of the Soldier once upon a time. He could almost feel fear now coming off Rogers' in waves.  
  
The asset looked properly horrified now, like a civilian, almost, his eyes gone wide even as what was left of the programming kept tugging his mouth out of its gaping moue to something militarily flat. He stared at his hands—flat palms, broken only by hesitant attempts to curl his fists—and Brock could see him trying to reach out against orders, to stem bleeding against Zemo's shirt and coat even as the rug soaked red around him. Brock wondered if the Soldier had wanted to stop him when he'd lifted the gun to shoot someone in the back; the asset hadn't moved until Zemo fell. If he tried to disarm Rumlow and save a life, he had failed at that at least.  
  
'Brock,' Zemo gurgled. 'Brock, please,' he said, as if he could be still saved even if Brock let the Soldier try, like it wasn't already too late for him, as if Rumlow hadn't already fired two rounds deep, deep into his spine.  
  
'Take this,' he said instead, stepping close to Rogers. He held the Glock to the Soldier. Rogers looked at it. His hands did not move. 'Take the gun.' Rogers looked up at him, away from the gun, begging silently: _no, please, don't make me_. 'Take the gun,' Brock ordered. 'Kill him; that's an order.'  
  
'Please, no,' Zemo begged. 'I'll do anything—' he tried, but whatever he could promise was lost to more gurgling. Brock didn't even glance. The Soldier did; the Soldier looked back at the dying man and blinked tears from his eyes. Brock stepped closer, looming. He was a bigger threat than that amount of cowering from the Soldier deserved. The Soldier almost let out a whimper and drew his hands into his chest as he flinched.  
  
'Take the gun,' Brock said again. 'This is an order, Soldier. You have to take the gun; it's for you.' The Soldier made the same face he had when Brock smeared a dead man's blood over his lips with a thumb: disgusted and unwilling. The bloodstain from his lips was gone now—faded by Rogers' saliva, by the water and food Rumlow had forced down his throat on the drive from the coast—but the line Brock had traced for himself across Rogers' splattered cheek was dark still, flaking a bit, like the rest of the blood sheeting him. Tear tracks ruined the bloodstains, but Brock liked it. The Soldier's hands twitched but he resisted.  
  
'Take the gun,' Brock repeated. He had never, ever had to repeat an order before, not to the Winter Soldier. It used to be a perfect weapon, but it wouldn't take a gun now, and he hadn't taken a gun in Nigeria. Rogers stared, and Brock felt anger burn in his chest. It lowered his voice to a growl. 'Take this gun and shoot him,' he ordered. The Soldier cowered.  
  
'Nm—Nuh,' the Soldier managed, barely audible, but Brock recognised a refusal this time; even if the Soldier hadn't been able to make a word, he could refuse. Brock took an angry breath, letting the rush of it light up the unreal parts of him. He changed his grip on the gun, no longer offering it. He struck out, backhanded and hard as he fucking could, knocking the Soldier to catch himself on his civilian-quality prosthetic. His nose streamed red but would stop on its own, even as Rogers coughed blood from his mouth.  
  
'Watch,' he said, and Rogers did. His eyes snapped up and he watched.  
  
Then Brock fired the third and final shot, into the back of Zemo's head. Zemo twitched with it, then laid forever still. Brock tossed the gun down, letting it clatter to the floor beside the Soldier and watching with disgust as the asset startled at the shot and flinched away from the clatter of the weapon.  
  
'Stay,' he ordered, almost absently. 'Let him bleed out,' he added, as a test, when he watched Rogers' hands twitch toward the already-dead body as if the sluggish leaking of red was still worth anyone's time. There would be no saving Zemo, but what was left of the Winter Soldier still wanted to try. The Soldier couldn't recognise that it was too late; Brock hadn't seen it confused or unaware like this before. The programmed asset had always been so efficient and impassive. Brock thought about the silent killing machine he'd missed so dearly in recent years; he thought this more primordial, petrified version of the soldier might grow on him too, if he could get it to behave. He thought of the shake in Rogers' hand which had never been there before and thought of all the other human weaknesses the asset hadn't had before. Order came with pain and the asset used to be perfect, even when the bosses saw inconsistencies and carved his head open. It started a hot, rolling tangle in Brock's stomach, to think of it. Rogers stared at the body, still frozen where Brock had given him an order to stay. Brock wondered how long the asset would kneel in blood, panicking.  
  
Brock left his soldier while he wandered down the hall off the living room and foyer, looking into a dining room whose table was nearly obscured by hoarded boxes and newspaper stacks, into a little bathroom with a spotless, unframed mirror and filthy, rust-stained porcelain fixtures, then into the Colonel's bedroom, and then into the basement. Brock lingered in the dusty stairwell, flicking on a light and waiting in the flickered delay for the most wonderful thing in the world to be all lit up.  
  
The recalibration machine sat there in all its glory, a dust sheet over the chair, hiding the plates Brock would get to lock around Rogers' head. 'Oh, darling,' he sighed, moving off the last basement step to reach out and touch his discovery. 'Oh, _baby_ ,' he said again, as his hand stroked over the old plastic of an eighties'-era recalibration unit's tube monitor, 'aren't we going to have some fun?' His warped and burned skin looked pinker against the almost-beige plastic. He typed a startup sequence and with a complaint, the machine began to hum to life.  
  
He ripped the dust sheet off and let it flutter to the ground, watching the slow cloud of particulate matter that spread thru the blue light of the computer's screen. He pressed one of his palms to the inside of the plates that would rest along Rogers' skull. He swore he could feel electricity already. Brock let the whirling of the ancient computer thrum in his bones as he made his way back up the narrow basement stairs.  
  
The Winter Soldier hadn't moved, sitting with the body still, having lowered himself further onto the wet rug, like it didn't matter that his clothes were soaking up blood too. He watched Rogers from the landing, his now-bloodied palm revealing his attempt to stop a dead man's bleeding. Rogers stared at his hands. Someone had taken HYDRA's indestructible metal arm and replaced it with something a sharp pair of tweezers could damage. The Avengers were useless; they had no idea how to cultivate something like the Soldier. They'd destroyed so much of what HYDRA had built, he thought, looking at the red palm and the forgotten gun that proved it.  
  
'How are we gonna get you to serve HYDRA again when you can't even pick up a gun?' Brock asked, stroking his hand over the Soldier's head like he really were a pet dog. The Soldier made a noise like he might cry, and the shake renewed in his hand. Brock liked seeing tears on his face; the asset had never really been able to sob properly before.  
  
'Don't worry,' Brock said, tucking his fingers thru Rogers' matted hair, carving out a grip without the Solider understanding. 'Don't worry, now, no.' He barely had to lift as he tugged; the Soldier folded his body up obediently, rising to his feet. Brock held him, wondering how much the old machine in the basement could fix. He thought of the Soldier he'd woken up for every mission for years; he wondered if he could build that boy again. 'We'll fix you up in no time.'


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'It's the one Rumlow needs to wake them up,' Steve told him. Bucky closed the notebook and looked up at Steve; his thumb kept his page by habit._
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> _'To wake up whom?' Bucky asked. There was a long silence... 'Who was he trying to wake up?'_
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> _'The others,' Steve told him, finally, whispering. That meant next to nothing._
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> _'Who are they?' Bucky asked again, clarifying..._
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> _'The Winter Soldiers,' Steve said, and Bucky's heart skipped. 'I'm not the only weapon they made.'_

The asset became aware.

It looked around. It tried to. There was a small, high window with an old newspaper taped up on the glass. There were exposed pipes in the ceiling, two bare sets of fluorescents installed against exposed and cheap wooden beams.

He used to work in a diner with beams like that—he could see it in front of him, suddenly, its noises loud and colours bright—a narrow little place under a barber shop that was next to a jewelers that closed in thirty-one and stayed empty til—he couldn't remember, but it had changed. _Things could change; time existed; the asset had to keep track; someone had to remember something, something, what?—_ He used to work in a diner clearing and cleaning plates; his clothes used to smell like grease but he couldn't smell grease now. He couldn't smell grease on his clothes. He smelled fear, mostly, in the old sweat sticking to his skin and suffocating him with the acrid stink. He smelled the rust of old blood and the fresh dust of drywall and the petrichor of rusting pipes and cracked cement foundation.

The asset could smell fresh blood too; it came back to itself: concerned. _I think I was a medic before._ It was in a basement, watching a man dangle upside down from pipes near the stairwell across a bare space of concrete, damp floor. A handler lounged on stairs leading up to—another storey?—was there such a thing as other space from the mission? Could there be a mission when the asset couldn't draw up its parametres? Something held the shoulders, the spine from inside, pulling them back flush against—

—against the _chair_ , he realised—the asset _panicked_ , its blood curdling, even if the two metal plates that cracked electricity thru the brain weren't pressed to its face. The steel of his cervical spine meant he couldn't even thrash his head with panic; he bruised the innermost fascias of his neck as he tried to rip away from the magnetic restraints. His body refused his second attempt to thrash. His body refused him and listened to some compulsion that had been gone—he'd been better than this; Melissa had said she was proud of him and now this? now he was watching this and couldn't even struggle?—

He could hear his own voice screaming silent in his ears, a phantom sound of protest and sobbing, as he watched someone sob real and live beneath a wet, waterboarded hood. He tried, but after bruising his neck, after the added aching pain, he couldn't make the asset's body cooperate enough to try to get away from the chair. He couldn't override the insistence that the pain mean he must have been resisting protocol—What protocol? What protocol?—the asset felt pain so it had to ask for recalibration; it felt pain and it didn't even know what protocol had broken; the asset had to report its failure and failure had never happened before. Failure would hurt and the asset already hurt— _weapons are nothing; weapons feel nothing_ —and the asset didn't want to hurt more. The crying part knew it didn't matter even if he could manage to try. The asset wouldn't be strong enough to rip itself off the restraints, to resist the ripping mutilation of the magnets yanking his false bones from his real flesh, even in order to gain freedom, even if he could stand the pain it would be. The asset realised it couldn't escape even if it could pull of the magnets; it would need its spine and that couldn't possibly be freed until the electricity stopped magnetizing the chair. He was trapped. The asset couldn't make its body try to stop what was happening to the dangling man. He couldn't escape even if he could control his body enough to try. He felt like he was sitting behind the asset's eyes, behind a glass wall. His heartbeat pounded on the glass in his head like a knock on an aquarium wall; he could barely hear past the low noise of it.

The handler had strung a man up by his ankles, hands bound to the front of his belt. His shirts were cut up the back, buttoned to the collar with ripped hems tied together; the material hooded him. He dangled over a full and running sink, having to hold his chin to his chest to struggle breaths thru the wet cloth. Blood was starting to seep down the makeshift hood from the cuts on his back. When he wasn't screaming and the handler wasn't talking, all the asset could hear was the wash of water over the sides of the utility sink; the water wouldn't stop. All it could hear was some voice in its head begging for all this to stop. The asset couldn't make any of this stop. He swallowed.

There had to be a word for this.

The asset couldn't think of it, but there had to be one for what was happening. It was awful and awful things had words. The asset couldn't do anything but sit where ordered, listening to the screams. There had to be a word for what the handler was doing: asking questions, pushing the dangling man's face into water, cutting and peeling squares of his skin out of him and lining them where the asset could see.

This had happened to the asset before, if Before existed. He hadn't been dangling like that—how desolate—he'd been tied down to a metal, grated table that outlasted him no matter how much he struggled and screamed. He hadn't dangled like that, no, but he'd been sliced up like that, with a sick type of care, like an evaluation.

The asset couldn't be sure, but it thought it knew things from before. It knew it hadn't been hung like the man in front of him. He knew his skin had been carved like that before. He knew his skin grew back like this man's couldn't. The asset knew this man was suffering but it couldn't know if it had ever been anywhere but in this room, watching this; it just couldn't be sure. The programme told him that there was only the mission but what did that make whatever revolting reality this was? There had to be a word for this.

_'Hell of a game, Stevie,' Bucky said from beside him, Bucky shaking him a little where he held Steve by his neck. His thumb pressed into and his palm engulfed Steve's little shoulder. He let go before they were noticed in the jostle of the crowd, too cautious, but he'd held tight enough to leave a savoury, bruising ache where he'd pressed the most. Steve smiled up at him; he opened his mouth to say—_

_Stop, stop,_ he thought, trying to say it. In front of him, there was a man dangling, bleeding, coughing beneath wet fabric tied over his face.

The handler pulled the knife away from the man's skin and wiped it on his own shirt. The blood joined a series of similar streaks along the white cloth. The asset thought that the dangling man might be crying. The handler rose from his comfortable seat where he'd slouched on the staircase, descending the five steps to the basement floor. He stepped into the bare flow of water, standing in front of the dangling man.

'I'll run out of patience eventually, you know, but until then, you suffer,' the handler told the dangling man, running a finger down the centre of his chest. The man was sweating with pain, straining to keep his airways out of the running sink. He trembled and struggled as the handler ran a fingernail along his skin. 'The notebook is here somewhere, or else you wouldn't be. Where have you hidden it?'

'I don't have thing,' the dangling man gasped. ' _There is no such thing as the notebook_ ,' he added, lapsing into Russian. The asset gave a translation when prompted; the handler chuckled as something behind the asset's eyes tried to scream. It was silent. It was complicit. It was weak and lost and terrible. The asset could hear music; it sounded like the childhood it never had; it came from inside its head; it hurt.

'Oh, your notebook is a thing of legend, but it's definitely real,' the handler sighed, before pushing the man's chin up, forcing his nose and mouth under the water. When he let go, the man sputtered and coughed desperately, trying to lift his face and unable to breathe fully past the sticking, soaking cloth. Over the man's coughing, Rumlow went on, leaning in intimately close to whisper into a waterboarded ear: 'I used to have a copy of four of its pages.'

Rumlow, the asset thought. Why did the asset have a name for the handler? The asset did not need names. The asset had a mission and targets. The asset did not exist but as a weapon. The asset did not understand identity, yet it knew the handler's name. He wanted to look away, but the asset couldn't. The asset wanted to run but it couldn't even lift its shoulders. It could barely move its head.

'I got 'em in a market so black you wouldn't believe it. Sneaking in those phrases when I got to handle him: I had the Winter Soldier wrapped around my finger. HYDRA is order, after all,' the handler said. The soldier remembered a market, a market he'd been in so recently he had been wearing the same boots; what was going on? How could the Soldier remember laughing next to a fruit stand and cherishing each sample of berries? That was impossible, because that existed without a mission and the asset did not. The asset did not laugh. The asset did not smile, enamoured, at someone so vaguely placed in his mind. The asset did not exist and yet the handler—and yet Rumlow reported on him.

'I got the Soldier to act in perfect order, with your phrases,' Rumlow explained.' So when they made me the new you, I made some phrases of my own. I don't think even you could get the Soldier to turn on me now.'

The handler dragged the tip of the knife down the same path he had dragged his finger. The asset felt it like it had made him seep red into the stained clothes he wore.

'Order is pain, too,' Rumlow said. The asset didn't recognize the name, but something was familiar. Something was off; there was something different, something rattling around the skull that wasn't there Before. 'You have a lot of skin, lots to go before I run out, and I don't have to keep cutting to make you hurt. Imagine some nice, hot salt water running along the squares I've carved in you. Imagine a nice juicy lemon, some alcohol or acetone. You've got the ingredients upstairs, you know. Those I can find without your help.'

' _Go fuck yourself_ ,' the dangling man spat, and Rumlow didn't need a translation for that. He shoved the man's face into the water briefly, renewing his sputtering as he tried to raise his head with his exhausted core.

The handler came close to the asset then, leaving the dangling man to sputter and cry. He reached out to stroke his hand the asset's dry, tacky hair, pushing it away from his face. The hair smelled baked to the asset, like the handler had left the chair on too long and the metal plates had begun to heat against the skin. Where were the technicians who made sure the chair worked perfectly? Where were the doctors who could carve into his brain precisely and make him into a machine, useful and exact? Who was this man burning him and slicing another? What was happening and why was the asset present for it? There wasn't a mission here; he shouldn't exist. Couldn't he just disappear, become aware when the mission began? Why did he have to witness this and know that the plates would lower?

The handler placed another square of skin in the neat line beside the asset. The asset stared at the nine squares and could feel something in his chest twist. He wondered where the feeling was coming from; he felt revulsion and horror, but the asset was not designed to feel. He stared at the squares of skin—awful, repugnant, indicative of nothing but suffering—and wished he couldn't feel the magnets holding his shoulders flush against the recalibration machine; he wished he could even try to pull off them, no matter how much it would hurt. Even if the magnets stopped, the asset didn't think it could escape this. The asset had no choice.

'Do you need another round in the chair?' the handler asked. 'You looked away again.' There were orders to watch the dangling man, he realized; the asset had looked at the line of skins.

 _God, God, please help me; I'm sitting next to a line of skins,_ something in the asset's head thought. It scared him; the asset was meant to have only the programme. He couldn't look at the dangling man anymore; he couldn't watch the handler hurt him. It was familiar and it filled the asset with a feeling of revulsion it didn't understand. It didn't understand how it had forgotten the order. He squeezed his eyes shut. The asset remembered the order now, but it didn't look at the dangling man; it was too awful and the asset couldn't stop it.

'No,' the asset begged. Something sobbed suddenly, out loud, finally echoing the phantom screaming in his head. 'Stop, please; please, make it stop.' He didn't want to go thru another round of recalibration. He didn't know how many times he'd been in the chair today, but he couldn't do it again. He couldn't do it again; it would kill him. He turned back to the dangling body so maybe he wouldn't have to; maybe he wouldn't have to if he just followed the orders he had forgotten and stared. He stared.

The man was tiring and becoming shocky. The water was still running, spilling over the utility sink and draining to the grate in the floor. He wouldn't be able to hold his head up much longer. His torso was shaking where his abdominal muscles were beyond strained. Holding his head out of the water must hurt, with his missing skin.

'He'll die,' the asset said, trying to warn the handler. Its face was wet too. Steve said a warning; _Steve_ spoke. The asset didn't understand what was happening; the programme was skipping and in pieces. He didn't know what he was supposed to do if he could forget orders; the asset did not exist without a mission.

'No. Not before he tells me what we need to know,' the handler promised, still stroking his fingers over the dried blood-tangled hair. The asset did not feel it. The asset could not feel anything but the twisting in his chest—its chest. It heaved and he gasped. He wanted the handler to stop touching him with a ferocity the asset was not allowed to feel. He wanted Rumlow's hand off him; he wanted Rumlow to stop touching him before the touch turned worse than what the chair could do. 'There are ways to keep people alive when they'd rather die.'

The asset knew that there were still ways to save the dangling man; the asset knew there was something else besides the orders to watch this. It knew there were ways this could stop. It remembered sitting with the handler—with Rumlow in the car, remembered when the blood in his hair was wet and not baked by electricity. The handler had held a gun to the asset, to its ribs and told him if he disobeyed he'd find a bullet in his lung. (The asset didn't think a bullet in his lung would kill him, especially if the handler knew how to keep people alive when death would be mercy.) The threat meant he could disobey, despite the overwhelming pressure demanding obedience. The asset was designed to obey; it was meant to obey; it could not exist without the mission. If the handler had to threaten him, then he wasn't the asset anymore. He was a person, like the dangling man. The handler did not threaten weapons; he did not threaten the chair or the magnets. The handler took no time to threaten the knife or the gun, but he threatened the dangling man and the asset. The asset realized—but no.

No, right?

_'Do you feel erased now?' Bucky asked. 'Still?' It was a surprising question. It wasn't really about being erased. Some parts of him were lost, stolen, carved out of his head or burned out with static. They were dead to him, even if Bucky remembered them enough to think they were still there. Some of the stories Bucky had didn't feel like distant reality or familiar fog; they felt like tales of a fiction character that happened to share his name._

_'Sometimes,' Steve said, because he guessed it amounted to the same thing. Most of him was still here. Only some of him was really gone; only some—_

But yes, the asset realized he was a person; the handler was afraid of him. The asset realized it had disobeyed; it had looked at the skin and away from the dangling man. The asset realised it even _could_ disobey; there were orders to watch the dangling man and he hadn't. He had _forgotten_ the orders. The asset closed its eyes. The chair wasn't a punishment; _recalibration_ wasn't a punishment. The handlers couldn't control him; the chair could. The handler wanted him in the chair so whatever kept forcing him behind the asset's eyes stayed stronger than him. Whatever kept him behind the glass wall in the asset's head kept him from acting and the chair made it so. The handler was afraid. The handler was afraid of the asset. Rumlow was afraid the asset would—that the asset might—

The asset whimpered. He didn't know what he would do. The asset didn't know what it could do. He wanted to do more than look away but he couldn't even try to pull against the magnets. It hurt too much to even think hard enough to try. The asset didn't know what else it could do. It did not exist without a mission. It did not exist. It was aware but there was no mission; if it tried hard enough, it wouldn't be aware and this would stop the only way it could.

The asset might be a person but there was nothing it could do when Rumlow came close and touched his face, dragging his fingers down the asset's neck, tugging his shirt enough to thumb at his collarbone. He touched the asset's skin and for a moment, the asset wondered why it didn't feel the crisp, immediate agony of acid chasing Rumlow's fingers. His mouth was moving, but the asset couldn't hear him past the fear. 'No,' the asset begged. He began to panic. He tried to move away from him, twist his face, anything, but he could barely feel Rumlow's hands on his shoulders; his shoulders were numb where the magnets pinned him down—

Rumlow stroked his hands over Steve's shoulder to his hip. He came even closer and straddled the asset, settling his weight on Steve's lap. The asset heard a whimper like someone was being crushed by a toppled library bookshelf. He tried to shove Rumlow off him, push his weight off, but the magnets wouldn't let his metal bones pull from the magnets pinning his shoulders and his forearms were trapped in old, Kevlar-and-leather straps. The asset couldn't resist even if it wanted to. The handler reached behind Steve's head, reconnecting some wires, pressing something cold and sharp to the base of his neck. He was speaking softly into Steve's ear, his voice gentle like his closeness translated to intimacy and not disconsolate contact.

There was a soft, cloying voice. The asset couldn't make out his words; the asset didn't know if Rumlow was reciting a triggering list or promising sick affection or something somehow worse. 'Please,' Steve begged all the same, 'please stop.'

Rumlow chuckled as he closed the plate of the recalibration machine around the right of Steve's face, the other cupping the left side of his skull. One of his eyes had melted and scarred from whatever fire had burned him and warped him from the handler the asset could remember; the asset couldn't help but flick his eyes between Rumlow's all the same, like he was searching for help. The handler's mouth was moving and the asset strained to hear past the terror of the closed plates on his head.

'I'll take care of you,' Rumlow said as the words evaporated and burned like steam from a whistle, stroking the side of his face that wasn't hidden under metal plates. 'Calm down; I'll take care of you.' The asset lost the words as soon as the ears heard them. The asset couldn't pull the words back up, couldn't know if they'd been an order, but his breathing slowed despite himself. 'I'll take care of you.' He needed to know what Rumlow was saying; he couldn't hear around the plates.

He tried to gasp when Rumlow's weight lifted off of him, show that he was scared, but whatever Rumlow had said was sweeping him away. His vision doubled and slid into vague nonsense, imperceptible. Something battered against the glass walls in his head and he was soothed without his own permission. Fear was allowed; fear made the asset docile. Something inside him wanted to resist the plates, to resist the calm stealing him away, but the handler said the words again and they stopped him from whimpering. The asset was silent. The asset was ready to comply. The asset was not aware and it had thought that would be a comfort.

Electricity snapped anew and the asset was nothing, nothing, no—

^^^

T'Challa repeated the name of the city to himself with the leader of his Dora Milaje had brought him. Okoye was flying them now, thru quiet zones in US airspace, to Cleveland. It was a clunky word, strange. T'Challa expected his first visit to the United States would be as strange as the city's name itself. He had always expected he would come here as a diplomat, if ever, not very quietly in pursuit of a kidnapper.

'It's a small city,' Nakia supplied, as tho T'Challa had been prompting for more and not simply rolling the white word around in his mouth. 'Why are we getting involved in this?'

'You met Bucky Barnes,' T'Challa reminded her. 'You met Steve Rogers at the dinner I had Ayo arrange. You know why.' Nakia made a noise that was not quite a scoff. He looked over at her. She shrugged and humoured him.

'Because Bucky is your friend?'

'Because Bucky is my friend and he loves Steve Rogers,' he agreed simply. 'This is a thing you do for a friend if you're able.'

'I just think it's a bit ridiculous to get this involved in the kidnapping of an _igxagxa_ ,' Nakia sighed. She looked away. 'Almost a dozen people are already dead and there will be more to come.'

'The white man kidnapped is my friend too,' T'Challa said, amused more than anything by Nakia's frustration. He didn't misunderstand it, but he trusted Bucky Barnes. If Bucky had a tool at his disposal which T'Challa might benefit from and did not have, he believed Bucky would lend it. This would be a crisis for him: the injury, the kidnapping of his partner, the apparent resurgence of HYDRA's designs on at least some part of his life. 'Not every _igxagxa_ is a threat to our way of life.'

'This one has killed more high-value targets than any known assassin; even if you give him the pardon of being a prisoner, it doesn't change that he has the skills and potential for that violence. This one was kidnapped once before, in our borders, and then you did nothing,' Nakia pointed out. Ultron had stolen him from the dried shores of the mud fields. 'He was stolen from Nigeria now; let them handle it.'

'Nigeria let Rumlow vanish,' T'Challa sighed. 'Altho it was probably the white people who put him in a room with the criminal in the first place.'

'Yes, why did your friend allow this?' Nakia demanded.

'People from the West think strange things about justice,' T'Challa guessed. He didn't understand a lot of what white people did when they got together to sign decrees. Bucky was wise enough to back from the Accords, like his father had kept the mantle of Black Panther from its register as well. Bucky nonetheless went when subpoenaed and let his lover sit with his former torturers. T'Challa couldn't imagine, had it been his lover taken and turned, that he would have left any handlers breathing, let alone in good enough shape to try something like this. Nakia snorted and grinned at him over the space between their aeroplane seats. 'They live in a different world than we do.'

'And yet, _here we go, spelunking_ ,' Nakia said in English. He laughed. He wondered where she had picked up such a bizarre phrase. She returned his eager grin.

'Here we go, _spelunking_ ,' he agreed. 'To Cleveland. Clee-ve-land.'

'The land of cleavers, I guess, or a cleaved land, and a little safehouse just outside the actual city limits,' Nakia agreed. 'What if the partner of your friend has been killed already?' she asked after a moment of hesitation with a prickled query.

'Then we tell my friend before a stranger has to,' T'Challa replied, after a tense second. He hoped that wasn't the fate he would bring home to his friend, who hadn't yet been awake when T'Challa had spared a moment to see him, before pursuing Rumlow where no one else seemed to realize he had gone.

'I do hope he's not dead,' Nakia added, after a long moment of amiable silence. 'I know how you carry the promises you make, even if you've made this one only to yourself.'

'I've met Steve Rogers,' T'Challa said, as tho it meant the promise had been made. Steve had been a quiet presence at Bucky's side, but he warmed to T'Challa before their dinner ended.

T'Challa had asked him seriously when they were alone for a brief moment afterwards and T'Challa had sent Bucky to fetch them drinks, if coming back had been a gift or a hardship for him. Steve had very seriously considered. He eventually said that it had been very difficult to recover both his memories and his body from the horrid programme they forced into his head, but he was here now. T'Challa had seen in his face that any amount of hardship he'd faced to make it stop had been worth it for the salvation of ceasing, that he would have rather died than have gone back to this. T'Challa hoped it didn't come death to free Rogers; he hoped he could get there in time, while there was something of that boy's shy smile left. 'I think he's a victim in this. I know he wouldn't want to be someone's tool. I would want his strength behind me if I had been trapped.'

'And mine,' Nakia reminded him.

'Of course, yours,' he agreed. 'Always, yours. Without yours, I am lost, Nakia.'

'Many people would be,' she agreed loftily. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, watching her absently observe the passing clouds below.

'Of course,' he agreed again, quietly, almost to himself. 'Rumlow's a very sick man,' he added, needing someone else to say that that at least was true in this world which had complicated itself infinitely over the past three years, it seemed, ever since HYDRA revealed itself and the world's security began to rearrange. Nakia murmured agreement. 'If this goes wrong,' T'Challa said quietly. He didn't know how to ask for assurance, not when he was meant to be the Crown Prince, when he was the one who had asked his father's permission to search out the white boy by promising he knew he could do it. 'If we kill him, trying to get him out?' He didn't know, not really, what was at the safehouse. He didn't know if they'd strike there or if they'd wait.

'We won't,' Nakia promised, as if Diana Turbay and others like her hadn't been killed by their own rescuers in vain. 'HYDRA never infiltrated Wakanda; they have no weapons to compare to ours and they have no fight we cannot win. They won't get past us either. We'll collect your friend and we'll take him back with us.'

'That's the best thing, isn't it?' T'Challa sighed. It was a big step, taking an outsider into their country, to offer them and a partner asylum, perhaps their friend, Samuel Wilson, who T'Challa had seen photographed as Rogers' help and protection time and time again. 'He'll be safe from this happening again, even if it means taking him from everything he knows?'

'Bucky, too,' Nakia agreed. 'It will keep this from happening again, but it is a tragedy. They'll both lose everything again.'

'Again?' T'Challa asked.

'Well, sure,' Nakia said, looking at him like he was an idiot. No one else looked at him like that. He adored her. 'Wakanda is nothing like my grandparents' Wakanda, I imagine the United States of today looks different from the United State of our grandparents' time. They started the colonists' Great Depression, you know? And then when Barnes and Rogers woke up, their world was gone. They just got used to the newness over there and now...' She shook her head.

'I know,' he sighed. 'I hope we don't start the Great Disagreement by harbouring him.'

'Neither of them are criminals,' Nakia said, surprising him, even as she shrugged daintily and flipped a page of the novel she'd brought for the flight. 'He's a kidnapped _igxagxa_. He's afraid. I would want harbour when afraid.'

'But you think it's unwise to get involved,' he pressed.

'Of course,' she agreed. 'Who trusts the white people to let us stroll off with two famous white people? To let us hide them from their weird conceptions of justice?'

'Who else could provide the security from the corruption of the outside world than us? Who would they be to challenge our throne?' he demanded. She levelled him a glance.

'Barnes invaded our mud fields,' she said, pettily, because the fields were practically no man's land between them and their postcolonial neighbours, just criminals and smugglers and as many Somalis as Wakandans or as the others still. 'White people always challenge the black man's throne. It's in their nature.'

'Barnes and Rogers will respect any rule we lay for them as refugees,' T'Challa said, vouching on a gut feeling. 'Barnes would have let me brand ignorant _igxagxa_ into his face if I had wanted, for pursuing Ultron like he did.' T'Challa didn't mention that it would have been moot to brand him, nothing like marking a poacher or a rapist. He had seen historical photos of the Captain with gashes and injuries but he carried no scars now. The brand would have lasted weeks, perhaps a year, but not forever, not with the healing the white man's magic had given him.

'I'm sure,' Nakia said, sounding wholly amused by the idea. 'Well, I hope you're right, that Rogers will be all right when we get to him.'

^^^

The asset was backed into a corner, brick to each side and someone's body blocking him in.

The asset became aware. The man with the scars was there, touching him, speaking to him, and the asset struggled to listen. The asset didn't know if Rumlow had orders; the asset didn't know why Rumlow was handling it like this, tenderly, terrifyingly. The asset was meant to be afraid enough to be docile for the handlers; weapons were useless if they were too petrified to move. Even if bricks weren't corking him in, he'd be unable to do a thing to resist with that hand on his neck.

'You're doing so well,' Rumlow told the asset, stroking its hair where they hid in the back of a closed fast food shop. The asset had no need for praise, but the handler touched its neck gently, laying a hand across the asset's skin in a way the other handlers did not. 'You'll even kill the next one, won't you?' The thumb on the asset's neck moved and the asset lost sight of the handler. It blocked out the sensation of the handler's hands, squeezed shut its eyes: _malfunction, unacceptable, a risk for a weapon._  It should report the malfunction, but the hand low on its throat meant it couldn't speak.

Rumlow had flicked on the deep fryers and the asset could smell grease. It should remind him of something, but the grease smelled familiar without any accompanying information. The asset told itself it did not exist; there was no mission and smells did not matter to a weapon. The hand on its throat didn't matter. The handler was close, close enough to warm the air between their bodies while they waited for the oil to heat too. The asset wondered if the handler was going to cook food, or if he was heating the oil to punish the asset with its boiling. 

'You did so well, holding her down for me,' Rumlow said. 'No one suffered, because of you. You did so well; you held her down and I sliced her throat right quick.' The asset gagged; the image popped up in the blackness behind his lids. He realised Rumlow wasn't pressed to his front because some of it was soaking and sticky with the blood that had spilt from the slice under her jaw like a stuck pig. Rumlow backed away from his gagging noise. The asset didn't even manage bile; he wondered if he'd been sick already over this. He wondered how long ago it had happened.

'It was better this way,' the handler told him. 'No one suffered; you won't be punished for doing the right thing.' He could feel her struggling arms in his, feel the back of her skull against his shoulder where Rumlow had made him pin the fast food employee. He had read her nametag when she was pinned against him, pinned with Rumlow's hand muffling screams. He couldn't remember it now; Rumlow's voice was too big in his head. 'You did what I said; next time, next time, you'll have to take the weapon I give you, OK? But for now, it's OK that you only helped. You did very well.'

He wondered if he'd tried to save her. He couldn't even remember her name—he'd read the nametag—but he wondered if maybe he'd tried to let her go. He supposed it didn't matter if he'd _tried_ ; she was dead. He hadn't been enough. He hadn't been good enough—

'Eat,' someone ordered, putting his hand back down on a burger bun. There was a handprint in red on the bun and the asset sobbed. It was his. He was bloody and he'd gotten it on his food; he'd let someone die and he was going to eat their blood on stolen food. He sobbed. He tried to beg: _no, please, I'd rather starve; I'll be OK being hungry; I can't do this; I practically killed her myself_. A hand slammed down into the table in front of it; the asset flinched and it made itself stop crying. It had to be impassive; it had to be docile; it would be the one hit like that, not the table, and the handler wouldn't stop there. Someone put his hand back again, making him take up the sandwich. 'Eat, or I will fucking—'

'Sh,' someone said. The asset had not made a noise. The asset felt sick and it couldn't remember why. It shouldn't feel sick. It shouldn't feel and it should be able to try to pull information from the past without a prompt for a mission report.

'System maintenance is required,' he reported, because he was broken down to the bone. He felt sick to his stomach. He felt hopeless. He panicked because weapons should not have room for things like hope, let alone an absence of it. 'System—' he tried again.  

'Somzeone is here! If you don't fucking _sh_ ,' the voice snarled, but then fell silent—

The next thing the asset knew there were gunshots, and the back door of the fast food shop was open, open to the loading bay, open to the back of the gas station next door, open to the other direction as the man with the scars. The asset was running before he could really register the pain of deciding. The pain caught up and he stumbled—He toppled heavy, crashing sideway; suddenly he was too dizzy to walk, behind the cover of a Dumpster and a blue-painted wood fence—

The asset became aware again in the back of a panel van, seated amongst the pots of foliage. He reached out and touched the fern closest to him. The leaf was a little sharp around its edges, thinner than the leaf the asset had thought a tall plant would have. The tall ferns were arranged so someone looking in the windscreen might see nothing but plants and a driver; the asset was being transported, but it felt fuzzy like it had been asleep. The asset wanted to curl back over like it somehow knew it had been, hours ago, but in turning from the green fern he realised there was another person further back in the van.

The man was already watching him, like the asset had come aware in a way he had noticed and decided to monitor. In a gross and sterile contrast with rich skin and a black suit, one of the man's hands was wrapped in white gauze: injury. The injury seemed incongruous with the Kevlar suit—or the suit made of something impressive, but not ordinary. The man was watching the asset evenly; the asset looked away from who had to be a handler, if the asset were being transported.

The man was even eyeing him supervisory, like a handler might, but handlers were white, or even white nationalists. This man in the other worldly suit was not the stock the asset had grown to expect. HYDRA handled the asset now, and HYDRA had splintered from something else the asset had known, some other group that would never have chosen a handler like this (it might not have chosen the asset if it hadn't been the only one made). HYDRA wouldn't choose someone like this. The asset had seen dozens of black men strapped down in Johannesburg as HYDRA doctors stole his blood again and again, and stole marrow from inside his bones, stole any part of him to try to remake men like they had once built the asset. The asset had watched the first (black) survivors of their attempts to recreate his serum killed as soon as the process was deemed stable, so HYDRA could use their own (white) officers as supersoldiers instead—

The asset didn't know who or what it had been built from; the asset couldn't remember; it was not built to remember. The asset was not usually shipped undercover, in a florist's van. The asset was usually shipped in a cryotube, or with a few white men's guns on him. The asset did not usually sit with an unarmed black man. He was not usually shipped somewhere where he could remember falling asleep against the bag he now sat on, with the noise of the rolling road passing under them. The asset wasn't built to remember. There was someone watching him and it had to be a handler. The asset twitched; its muscles readjusted almost without permission, shifting him his seat like he thought he could burrow away with its shoulder, disappear into the panel van's side.

It looked down at its nervous hands; those hands weren't the asset's, surely. The asset had been different. The asset should have a metal hand, dangerous and strong and indestructible— _the asset remembered grappling with a target, being unable to throw him off: too dense, too strong, too aware of how the asset was going to try to use his weight against him. The asset remembered the man's hand gripping tight, breaking panels, disabling a servomotor underneath. He broke the unbreakable arm; the technicians had panicked until they had it fixed. That target had been_ —The asset blinked; the asset came back to itself.

The asset became aware. He was in a van, hiding amongst ferns and sitting on a flat, rectangular bag of soil. A man sat across from him, dark and watchful. The asset looked down, because it was not meant to meet the handler's eyes. The asset looked down and suddenly felt confused. He could feel fabric against his shoulder where he'd pressed into the van; he could feel a welded seam against its shirt, its skin; the metal pauldron of the heavy metal arm was gone. The asset had a soft, soft, sensitive blue hand with delicate lines of strong, red framing. The blue felt a little like skin when he touched it; it could feel what he touched perfectly. It didn't make sense. It was too much; it was beautiful, to feel like this, to touch like he was human. The asset was merely a weapon.

The asset should not have hands like this, that felt and could remember holding someone else's; the asset had only the mission. If the asset didn't exist, then it didn't matter that it was scared. There wasn't a mission; it didn't have to feel anything. The asset did not exist without a mission; the asset did not exist.

'You are real, Steve; you exist,' the man hiding in the van with him said quietly, as if the asset had spoken aloud. _Steve_ , the asset thought, echoing the name the man said like a correction. 'We are taking you home.'

'The asset is ready to comply,' the asset lied. The asset was confused. Was the man with the scars driving? Where had the chair gone? Where were the dangling man or the magnets? Where was the friendly handler who had made the arm? Where was the stern handler with the same eyes? Where was Bucky? Where was _he_?

'There is no mission,' the person across the van repeated, tilting his head back against the panel van's wall behind him. The asset listened to the sound of the road under them instead of trying to reply. It just didn't understand.

'Are you really awake?' the man asked when the asset found it couldn't stop staring at him. The man looked back at the asset from under hooded eyes, tilting his head. 'Are you in there?'

'Yes,' something that wasn't the programme said. 'I'm here,' it added, the mouth making sounds without permission. The man—The handler did not punish him. The handler blinked measuredly.

'How are you feeling?' the man asked, and the asset didn't know. It didn't know how to even go about answering a question like that. The handler should demand a report, but there had been no mission so the asset shouldn't even exist. The asset certainly wasn't supposed to feel anything; weapons felt nothing. It felt nothing. It could feel hands on its body that weren't there; the asset had to break his stare at that, had to look down, to make sure the hands it could feel on the body weren't there. The head roared with pressure like the asset had been recalibrated recently.

Everything was broken; it couldn't have _just_ had maintenance, even if every ache promised it had been remade and thoroughly. It couldn't pull up enough of the programme to report the impossibly-thorough dysfunction of the protocols and compulsions and orders. It didn't know what this question were code for; it didn't know what to say to this handler to get into the target site; it didn't know why it was awake without a mission. It wished it could go into the ice to make all of this stop.

_'Your work,' the handler began, pulling him—the asset out of flashbacks, 'has been a gift to mankind. You shaped this century, and I need you to do it one more time.'_

'Don't make me,' he begged, whispering, and the handler was different again suddenly; the asset was in the back of a van. They were hidden from the sight of the cab windows by ferns; the handler was too close for comfort, too close in too small of a space. There was nowhere to go. The asset must be being collected. 'Please don't make me,' he whispered, because wherever they were headed there was sure to be a target, a victim, a life he could be forced to end.

'No one will force you any longer,' the handler said. 'You're free,' he said, but that had to be a lie.

'Am I going home?' The question came from the asset's mouth almost without the machine's knowing at all. The asset ducked its head, trying to hide behind hair that was too caked in something to fall forward like it should. It did not have a home; weapons did not have homes. It did not have a home and it had to be careful of this independent thing in its head or it would be punished. It'd have to go in the chair again.

'Yes,' the handler replied. 'I am taking you home. Your partner will be there soon as well.' The asset felt confused. It had more questions, but it didn't know how to ask when there was no mission. It shouldn't exist. It shouldn't have a home, or a partner, or anything like that. It shouldn't feel a pounding relief at the idea of whoever was waiting for the asset.

'Am I—' it tried. 'What's happening?'

'I am T'Challa, the Black Panther, protector of Wakanda,' the handler told him. 'You escaped Rumlow when we made a distraction. As I thought, you fled when you had the chance. Unlike we thought, he evaded us too. We'll find him before he can come for you again. It's to find him that I have to drop you off, that I cannot stay; do you understand this?'

The asset shook its head: no. It did not understand. It didn't know where it was or what was happening. It had gotten better, it knew; it used to understand things like this but now it was broken again. The asset was afraid it would be punished, but it just couldn't force its mind to think the way it should—The asset was not designed to think.

'When I take you home,' T'Challa said patiently, but urgently, 'you must stay there. You must wait, where it is safe and you are hidden. Your partner will return to you, and I will arrange your asylum.'

'The asset will wait for handlers at rendezvous,' he managed, when he understood with pain as blinding as the sun scraping thru his forebrain. 'The asset cannot make decisions,' he whispered. T'Challa smirked at him.

'Yes, but Steve can,' T'Challa corrected. 'You escaped almost without our help.'

The asset did not believe that, not for a second. The asset was precise. The asset had no escape. The asset did nothing without orders; the asset did not receive help. Nothing came Before; nothing came for weapons. He didn't know who Steve was. He didn't know who the handler claimed was waiting for him.

'It will be all right,' T'Challa told him. 'You'll be safe once we sneak you in.'

The asset tried to ask a question and it lost track of the handler in the pain of it all, the strange black handler who promised safety. When it could see again, when it could hear, when he came back to himself—

The asset became aware again in a strange room, lying horizontally on a mattress so unlike the one Rumlow had had in the warehouse. The asset became aware gradually, like it was waking up on its own, from an impossible sleep and not jerking out of the ice or against restraints in a surgical lab. It lay on top of a soft, impossible blanket. The handler was gone; he'd left the asset to sleep like the asset was allowed such things. The curtains were drawn tightly and the asset watched the strange glow of a clock on the little table by the side of the bed. The old blood on his face had flaked a little onto the pillow and the asset was disgusted by that. He sat up; he brushed the awful from the nice cotton best he could. The handler had left him here; he didn't understand why he'd been left at a rendezvous. Maybe someone was coming.

But no, no one came for weapons. He was alone.

^^^

The house was unassuming but for the swarming FBI and local PD and the cameras. Always with the cameras, he thought, as he snuck in thru the police perimeter in the backyard. He entered via a door that led to a kitchen. It had recently been taken off its hinges, pried out of the frame it had been sealed into with acoustic caulking twenty or thirty years ago, when Colonel Karpov dropped out of the active list in Bucky's archive summaries. Tony knew there were all sorts of safehouses potentially still sealed across North America, hiding men like this, but it felt otherworldly to step in past the crowbarred doorway and into linoleum laid in the early fifties and never changed. The fridge was an ancient thing with rounded corners and rusted chrome handles.

There was rotting fruit in a wicker bowl but Tony couldn't place it over the smell of rotting corpse. He wondered how cursed this space was, that there weren't even flies buzzing. He had known there would be at least one body here, like there were two bodies in the gas station Rumlow stopped at in Rhode Island, and two in the deli in Pennsylvania he robbed. The spring outside was dull, but the house was warm, heated by old radiators. The warm was sticky and thick with the tangible smell.

Tony crossed the kitchen, eyeing the files left open on the counter and stepping over the little yellow cones marking a dried copper bootstain. He wandered down the little hall, pretending to look in each of the rooms he passed on the way to the source of the smell, the voice of officers he could still hear. It was surreal; one of the rooms had a perfect sheet of dust along the floor, disturbed only by the line of the door, probably pushed open for the first time in years by an investigator. The room was filled to the ceiling with old newspapers and file boxes and a perfect layer of centimetre-thick dust. Tony turned away. He couldn't focus; he was too afraid of what the machine in the basement would tell them about Steve. He was too afraid of what it meant that he'd spent three days searching North Africa and Rumlow had been in Cleveland. He'd started flying the moment he'd heard, but after all the hours in the air mulling it over, his stomach hadn't stopped twisting at the knowledge that Rumlow had escaped and found a recalibration unit before Tony tracked down so much as a clue.

He stepped into the living room, and he saw the body, lying on his stomach. He could see Zemo's eyes, open and still staring ahead from the bloated and squished flesh of his face.

'What's the story here?' he asked the forensic tech taking photos with an enormous camera lens. The woman in the FBI jacket seemed wholly unbothered by the smell of a days-old, rotting body.

'The house is owned by a Jerry Smith, a well-constructed fake identity for the body downstairs,' she replied. 'The basement is also an information hold, some old tech too. A recalibration unit is improperly installed downstairs, but otherwise, nothing on the Winter Soldier. There's an empty safe that was unsealed very recently. Whatever was there—' She sighed and hesitated, like she thought Tony hadn't seen enough information holds to know the subtext here.

'Whatever Rumlow needed, he got,' Tony agreed. He looked at the body of the doctor—the kill squad sergeant who had set all of this in motion. Tony shook his head. The man had spent so long planning this, had known every detail he needed to stay one step ahead of the Avengers, but hadn't known that once Rumlow had whatever he'd wanted from that safe, he was a goner. He must have planned this whole thing with Rumlow and now he was just a body, a bag of flesh. It was a waste, somehow. He could have had the decency to accomplish what he'd thought was worth ruining Steve's life again, making sure it would stay ruined this time.

'How long's he been dead?' Tony asked.

'About three, four days,' the examiner said. _Jesus fucking Christ,_ Tony thought to himself, furious. Four days in Cleveland and Tony hadn't had a clue.

'The other body has been dead for about twenty-four hours; the face is just a bit bloated from the water.' Tony nodded. He wasn't used to this, like the medical examiner was habitual in their countenance. Tony wasn't used to days-old dead rot. He wasn't used to seeing corpses like this. Blasting someone from within the suit was different from seeing this rot.

'I heard there was some equipment here?' he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. It was harder to look away from the body than Tony would have thought.

'The basement stairs are at the end of the hall,' the officer told him.

A gurney rolled past him as he made his way down, with another body in a bag. Tony ignored the fresh twisting in his stomach as he stepped back into the doorway of the dining room, making room in the narrow hall for the two women guiding the gurney thru.

'Colonel Vasily Karpov,' an officer supplied from behind him. Tony turned to look at her, the woman who'd escorted him from the airport. Officer Andrews gave him a tight, unhappy smile where she was cataloguing files from a dusty box on the dining room table. She had a dusk mask around her neck. 'Big name in the KGB, and apparently with HYDRA, too. The Sokovian officer is Helmut Zemo. No idea where he fits into this.'

'He played the doctor,' Tony sighed. 'They didn't have a doctor hostage; this guy was the fake doctor.'

'That's pretty fucked up,' Andrews said.

'Yeah,' Tony agreed heavily, without anything constructive to say. 'I'm going down to the machine.'

'Secretary Ross is down there,' Andrews said. Tony turned.

'Ross got here before me?'

Andrews shrugged, apologetic.

'You came from Morocco,' she said. 'He came from DC.' Tony sighed. He had wanted a chance to get his ducks in a row before he had to face the music. He looked down the dark, narrow stairs. He made his way into the basement, into the odd, dense smell. He paused on the stairs, looking at the hanging evidence tags and the ropes which had been cut to loose a set of legs but now dangled like a sick octopus from the pipes they'd been lashed around. He looked at the dust sheet rumpled along the stairs, damp and vaguely pink-dyed by blood on one side. He stared at the recalibration unit, its screen dark and its straps loose. He looked at Ross, standing and poking around at the now-empty safe embedded in now-ripped drywall. He moved the open door slightly, holding the corner of it with a handkerchief to preserve the scene.

'Hello, sir,' Tony said, stepping off the final step. He avoided the wet sheet. Ross turned to look at him. He stepped towards Tony, avoiding the plaster as it lay and avoiding the incomplete set up of little yellow evidence markers.

'Tell me,' he began. 'Did you have any idea that Rumlow had made his way into the States, sometime in the past week?' Tony thought about lying. He had no idea where Rumlow had gone or why Zemo was dead. He decided against it.

'No, sir,' Tony admitted. 'He escaped Lagos on a boat he'd disguised as a shipwreck on Lekki Beach. Some workers stripping another wreck reported blood-soaked white people, but not quick enough. We tracked him to that warehouse outside Rabat, and then nothing. No one else had leads suggesting he'd left Africa.' He felt like a child telling a teacher the other boys had had slingshots too, that he wasn't the only one who'd been playing when the window had shattered and they'd let danger break loose like an idiot Pandora.

'So Crossbones got past you, with a foreign accomplice and a possible hostage,' Ross said. He touched the faceplate of the machine almost curiously, bending it on its hinge. He was distinctly disgusted by it, but he recognized the machine's miracle of science, like Tony did. Tony realised the smell was burning, of ozone or hair, from the heat and electricity of the machine.

'An absolute hostage,' Tony corrected quickly, past his disgust. 'Private Rogers would not do this of his own control. In the field with us, he functioned as an active zone medic. He never picked up a weapon. He didn't in Nigeria either; check the footage. He refused a gun and he made every effort he could to resist.'

'He climbed into an SUV that had just ran over a civilian employee,' Ross countered. 'That's the footage.'

Tony remembered that part of the footage too well; a few civilian employees who'd been on lunch had hid in the parking garage elevator lobby once the alarms started ringing. Rumlow had stashed Steve against a barrier near those doors, leaning him into the pillar and going to steal an unmarked NP vehicle. One of the Nigerian women hadn't understood who Steve was, the danger he represented, or if she had, was braver than Tony knew. She saw someone covered in blood when alarms were blaring.

She tried to get Steve to hide with them. She'd opened the door of the lobby; she'd tried to go to him, as if she was going to try to drag Steve to safety. Rumlow mowed her down as she ran to Steve and hauled him by his sleeve, and Rumlow had backed over her at that. It had taken him a tense moment of his shouting to get Steve to so much as look away from her mangled corpse, under the front tires, but as soon as Steve looked away, he climbed into the SUV's backseat and Rumlow sped off. Ross and Tony both knew there had been more to the situation than that—more that even the objective, if silent, security reel showed—but they ceased their bickering and Tony shrugged, quipping quickly:

'Well, nobody's perfect.'

Secretary Ross did not seem impressed. 'And I don't suppose you have any idea how to find them now, since you were looking so hard before,' he pressed.

'We will,' Tony said simply, acting far more confident than all of this had made him feel. He felt like a piece of straw, left frayed at the edge of a dirt-floored room when the rest was already swept away. 'GSG-9's got the borders covered. Recon's flying all hours of the day and night. They'll get a hit; we'll handle it.'

'You don't get it, Stark,' Ross snapped. 'It's not yours to handle. You have been absent to the externalities of this event—'

'Sir, that is not—' Tony tried, because he'd been the one to try to restrain a superhuman possessed by an evil man, only to be hit to hard he was tossed like a cat toy. He was standing in front of the Secretary with a broken face and a broken thumb, and this man had the audacity to try to imply he had been absent to the externalities of this event? Tony had climbed to his feet seeing too much double to give chase; he'd triaged the bodies around him best he could. He'd felt for the pulses of two corpses before he found Bucky lying in a spreading puddle of his own blood and desperately trying to get right back up.

Tony had had blood on his sleeves, on his skin. Ross hadn't stepped foot in Africa in his life.

'It is true,' Ross said, cutting him off. 'And this is why the Accords exist, so we can stop heroes from running amok. I'm putting the German border group on this.' More than that, he would be taking the Avengers off. Tony scoffed. He gaped at the man.

'And what happens when the shooting starts?' Tony demanded. 'Do you let them kill Steve Rogers?' Ross shrugged. He tucked his handkerchief away elegantly.

'If we are provoked,' Ross said deliberately, unimpressed with Tony's offense. 'Of course we kill Steve Rogers. There are dead people who would be alive now. Crossbones said a sentence, _one_ sentence, something anybody might have said, and suddenly, Rogers became a threat. Feel free to check the footage.' Tony looked away.

Tony had seen the footage; hell, he'd seen the bodies in this building as well as the wreckage in Nigeria. He didn't need to check it to feel the guilt trip. He knew he was one of the people who let Steve walk into a trap, complacent with the comfort of foiling a bombing plot, and fooled by a doppelganger, like this was one of his mother's telenovelas. He'd trusted that they'd finally caught Rumlow after years of looking; he'd never thought he'd been hiding for years to build them this trap. He'd talked Bucky out of his discomfort, told him it wouldn't be that bad for Steve to sit with someone who used to—

There were two yellow evidence markers on a table near the chair: a line of drying squares of skin, like index cards, right next to the chair and Secretary Ross. He tasted bile and tried not to give away his revulsion.

Ross said: 'He is far more dangerous than you give him credit for.'

'Rogers or Rumlow?' Tony clarified.

'Doesn't matter,' Ross replied smugly. 'And you? You and your team? You're not getting put on this. It is more than clear you can't be objective.'

'Mister Secretary,' Tony said, voice heavy. He did not beg. 'Please. You gotta let me bring him in.'

'You brought him into this; you think you can get him out?' Ross sneered. He turned away, adjusting his cufflinks. Tony prickled at being dismissed; he wasn't a little boy anymore and he didn't have the luxury of glossing up distant moments with his father, not knowing all he'd done. Tony was nothing like his father, and he was done being dismissed for trying to do the right thing. He was done paying penance for mistakes when he'd done far more good and never made the same one twice. 'And why would that end any differently from the last time?'

Brazen, Tony snapped: 'Because this time I won't be wearing _loafers_ and a silk suit.'

'Crossbones got past you in Nigeria—'

'And he got past _everyone_ looking for him, out of Nigeria's most secure police compound, across an ocean, and thru five states,' Tony said. 'He's a tricky bastard, but I will find him.'

'Stark,' Ross sighed.

'I will put an end to this,' Tony insisted. Ross watched him with a clear, measured look. 'Seventy-two hours, guaranteed.' He said it cooly, so cooly as to almost oversell it. He was a Stark; they oversold and then they delivered. Ross tilted his head, and Tony knew he'd won. Jesus Fuck, Tony needed to fucking _find_ Steve and find him soon, or else he'd get a bullet courtesy of an armed member of a special German police force; how fucking ironic.

'Thirty six hours,' Ross corrected. 'I expect this cleaned up, Stark,' he added, honestly shaking a pointed finger at Tony. He sighed and shook his head slowly, looking away. With that, he buttoned his jacket and climbed the blood-stained stairs. It did not escape Tony all the times his father had sighed in that same tone before leaving Tony to clean up the basement workshop.

The stakes were much higher than that now, for all Tony wished things were simple. He pulled a set of gloves from his pocket and turned on the recalibration unit. It whined softly, capacitors almost too old to do even that, as it lit up. Tony struggled to make sense of how the programme was meant to be carved into Steve's head, to sure up the surgical scars and psychological compulsions there. He tried to see what Rumlow had done instead, pressing old electrical patterns into a brain years away from what scarred mess it had been.

Tony searched and hoped things weren't as bad as they seemed.

^^^

Bucky had felt like an idiot, flying back to the States. Rashida had told him leaving Nigeria was the best thing he could do. She had told him he might still be a target, and that he was certainly a media focal-point for the catastrophe that Nigerian powers-that-were could live without. He should be rolling like he did in wartime, with confidence and a determined speed and his men beside him, ready to tear down the Nazis and HYDRA and the others who propped them up. Instead, he was hiding from cameras—he'd been hiding from them since they'd been outed, and now the cameras were blaming him for letting his partner fall into this, and they were right.

He was hiding from the cameras and hiding from his responsibilities as a superhuman, as a supersoldier. He wouldn't sign the Accords and so he couldn't look for Steve even if Sam would let him. Sam, too, like Rashida, had said going home was best. Bucky could barely think past his constant, buzzing anxiety, the wondering and sick mind-twisting over what was happening to Steve; he'd be useless looking like this, over-panicked and not healed enough to be at full strength.

DC didn't look any different. Bucky supposed there wasn't a reason it should. Life didn't stop for any one tragedy. Babies had been born the day Peggy died, and every day since. Life hadn't stopped for that, or for when he'd plunged into the ice; why would it have stopped because Steve was missing? The city had just as many cars and buses and taxis as it had when they left, filled with just as many unconnected lives. He almost didn't notice at first that they were on his road.

He watched their building approach; it had never felt less like home, not even when the wall had been shot out.

'Hey,' Bucky said, when Sam reached for the taxi handle too. Sam stopped; he waited. 'Hey, man, I just—I need to be alone right now.' He was embarrassed to admit it in front of the cabbie, but she was calmly picking at the chipped, baby blue nail polish on her fingers, ignoring him for all she could definitely hear. Sam didn't look impressed; Sam looked almost disappointed to see Bucky trying to send him off.

'Serum or no,' Sam said, very kindly not snapping, 'you were shot six days ago; you were discharged less than twelve hours—'

' _Sam_ ,' Bucky complained. Sam went on.

'I know you,' Sam said. 'You shouldn't be alone right now, Bucky.'

'Sam, I just—' Bucky sighed. 'Please,' he asked, unsure how to say: _I need to break down about this, and I can't do that in front of you._  His voice came out shakier than he had thought it would.

Sam looked at him for a long time. It was weak, but Bucky couldn't look up. That was the whole point. He still felt like new, fresh skin stretched over barbed wire and coals, but he was healed enough to keep it together in front of Sam; he had to be.

He didn't want Sam to know how out of his mind he felt. He felt a deep, cold something that was too close to shame at how lost he felt, with Steve taken and something happening to him—again, again, again—something awful, like whatever they'd done to leave him on the table where Bucky had found him, deliriously reciting his serial number and rank. Since then, HYDRA had taken the serial number from Steve; he never remembered it, like he never remembered his ma's funeral, like he never remembered a lot of things that were Buck's alone now. Steve had lost other things too, things only he'd known about himself that were never going to be his again. After Steve fell, HYDRA took his memories and self. They'd taken everything from Steve once, and maybe Bucky wouldn't get him back this time, not even the mostly-lucid version he'd had after deprogramming, who laughed like he used to and then woke up in the middle of some nights talking like a machine. Maybe it was already too late. Bucky couldn't even imagine what would be worse, what he was more afraid of them finding: Steve wiped and lost forever or Steve dead for real. He knew Tony and Nat and the rest of the world were looking, but he couldn't help but think it had taken two years to find Rumlow once, and it had turned out that he'd planned to be caught. He couldn't imagine they were enough to find him again, not quick enough, not for Steve. All the worries pressed down on Bucky and made it hard to breathe.

'OK,' Sam agreed, surprising him. Bucky felt like he was going to vibrate into individual molecules from panic and grief; he'd thought Sam would insist on holding him together. 'I'll come back with food, OK?' Sam offered, compromising. 'Give you a couple hours: literally two.'

'Thanks, Sam, really,' Bucky managed. Sam waved him out of the car and to the curb. He watched until Bucky was inside.

It felt strange, unlocking the door in DC alone. Bucky shouldered it opened with a sigh, holding onto the handle and lingering in the doorway.

It was dim, and perfectly quiet. Steve didn't have the radio on while he painted or cooked; Steve was a prisoner somewhere while Bucky had agreed to sit tight. He forced himself to step into his own home, and closed the door.

He dropped his bag by the credenza in the hall. He put Steve's bag on top of it; he almost hadn't known what to think when Sam had brought Steve's things from the hotel with Bucky's, when they were finally given the OK from his doctors to return to the States. It had seemed so odd suddenly, that the extra sweater and change of clothes hadn't ceased to exist when Steve had been taken. Steve was a prisoner again, and Bucky took an extra carry-on thru increaed airport security. Bucky had gone back to the States to hide like a good, obedient coward while others searched.

Bucky dropped his keys onto the credenza, next to the notepad of reminders Steve kept there.

LOST MY KEYS was the most recent note; Bucky hadn't known Steve needed another replacement set before they left. He huffed to himself in amusement, touching his fingers to the slight indents of a cheap bic. Steve complained often that he remembered being able to keep track of things better—and he was right, he had been better at it—but Bucky remembered too all the times he'd come home to Steve sitting in a hallway or on the building's porch, having left his keys inside when he left early that day. The majuscules were softer than Steve's usual blocky print. They didn't quite match the rest of the page and Bucky wondered if LOST MY KEYS would be the last reminder Steve ever left. He swallowed his acidic worry that he'd never get a chance to give Steve a new set.

He looked up from the notepad reflexively and noticed something strange. The photo of the two of them was gone.

They kept an old photo on the credenza, right above the notepad. It had been taken not long after Steve had re-upped with the Commandos, after he'd stopped wearing the red cross, but before they went out the first time. It was before Steve had picked up a gun, and before he'd spent most his time in the field triaging anyway, most of his time on bases copying maps and shoving papers into the extra pack he wore just for that.

The photo was maybe the most intimate one Bucky had let them take, back in the day. Tony had some candids of them now that were sweeter, maybe a few of them posed and smiling like a real couple, not friends. In their day, Bucky had never even let Steve convince him a photo booth was safe enough; he knew what people whispered about Steve on account of his art and slight frame, the feminist rallies he went to and where the police would beat him and a bunch of other protestors up. Bucky knew what it would have looked like, the two of them coming out of the booth all flushed. He'd never let them take any photos like that, but he'd seen the Army photographer coming and he'd not lifted his arm from Steve's shoulder.

If anything, he had pulled Steve closer. He'd almost tucked Steve into his side like that photo Colonel Phillips kept of his wife. It had felt like instinct at that moment; foolhardy relief that Steve was alive hadn't been diminished by worry at how he'd changed. Bucky had tugged him a bit closer, and Steve had slung his arm around Bucky too. Bucky had a perfect choir-boy smile, like all the bond ads and comics gave him. Steve was squinting into the camera like the light was still bothering him like it had fresh from Zola's table, turning his grin lopsided. His face in the photo was slightly out of focus, like Buck had pulled him closer in the very nick of time to catch the flash of the exposure.

They had a copy of the original, with the crease in the corner edited away, because the collector who'd bought the original had donated it crease and all to the Smithsonian when they died before Bucky was found. After Bucky woke up, the photo sat above an inscription that said Steve Rogers was the only member of the Howling Commandos unit to give his life in service to his country. He'd stood in front of that exhibit when he'd first woken up, with little kids milling about, too numb too even worry that he might cry.

After HYDRA fell, Bucky had watched a custodian replace the etched glass with a line of very similar sentiment, that Rogers had been held as a prisoner of war under HYDRA twice, once in what a curator chose to describe as a _brief_ four-month stint as a captured medic in Azzano's experimental labs—and then again from his presumed death in late March of forty-five until the collapse of HYDRA in early April of twenty-fourteen. There was a tiny, tiny border of barely-there dust where the frame had been lifted; it almost looked like someone had snagged it on their way to the bedroom.

Bucky looked down the hall; the doors to the two bedrooms didn't look any different, each ajar, than they had when he'd left. Suddenly, he felt a little afraid. The still-fading scars on his chest felt too sensitive under his shirts; had he just walked into another trap? Silently, Bucky lifted his shield from where it rested on the shelf. He ignored the pang of guilt: if he'd brought the shield to Nigeria—if he hadn't been so stupid, if he hadn't been wandering around like a civilian and an idiot, if he hadn't been so arrogant as to forget that just because he'd stopped fighting didn't mean that they'd stopped being targets—he wouldn't have gotten shot twice in the right lung; he wouldn't have been downed and out of commission. He could have fought. Steve wouldn't have been stolen away by Brock Rumlow, of all the evils in the world.

Bucky crept silently down the hall. An intruder who wanted to kill him wouldn't have left a clue in the front hall, surely, Bucky told himself to slow his pounding heart. If someone had broken in for a photo, it was likely a reporter, a paparazzo. It admittedly didn't make much sense that they'd take a copy of a photo the public already had, but there wasn't anything else missing and there weren't any booby traps left behind. The guest bedroom with maps and the bed Sam slept in sometimes was empty. Their room was empty too, like they'd left it. Their best photo of Peggy had moved too, like someone had pulled her closer to the edge and run their fingers down the glass; she gave him her beautiful, old smile from her spot on the dresser. Bucky shifted his grip on his shield. Something felt off.

Bucky spun when the closet door shifted behind him; he had his shield at the ready, most of himself tucked behind it, before he realized what threat he was even protecting himself from. He stared where he had crouched, down the barrel of a handgun held by someone sitting at the back of the closet, beneath their hanging clothes.

It was Steve, covered in old blood and curled in the corner of the closet, just like he used to in the Tower when he felt like hiding, overwhelmed. Bucky couldn't believe it. He didn't understand. Steve stared at him, suspicious, silent, and he didn't lower his gun. Bucky wondered where the hell Steve had gotten a gun.

'Steve,' he choked out. Steve's aim did not waver.

Bucky thought, a little crazily, it might be the first time being held at gunpoint filled him with joy and not fear, not even the smallest bit of fear. He dropped the shield mostly without meaning to—he was used to Tony's magnetic relays, but of course they were embedded in the Kevlar of the Captain America suit, not his civilian clothes—and it rang and settled out of its brusque, concise oscillation on its convex side.

'You're here,' Bucky gasped. 'Steve. You're here; I can't believe it. How did you get here?'

'Is this a safehouse?' Steve asked him. His face was steely under the streaked bloodstain. He smelled like old panic, rot, and the burn of ozone. Bucky didn't understand the burnt smell and he selfishly hoped he wouldn't have to.

'Steve, it's me,' he said, to no effect. Bucky didn't think Steve recognized him. The gun should have given that away, but he'd hoped. He didn't know if Steve had come home or followed muscle memory to a place that was strange to him.

'Is this a safehouse?' Steve repeated; he snapped Bucky out of his shock. He remembered when Steve first came home as an outpatient, what he would do on the worst days, when he found Steve curled up in hiding spots in the Tower.

'You're safe here,' Bucky promised him, first and foremost. 'You're safe. This is your home. You're safe, Steve. You're home.' Bucky reached out a hand, reaching for Steve like he could deflect bullets. He couldn't. That didn't stop him from taking a tiny, crouching step, moving towards the closet. Steve didn't blink or shift the gun, but Bucky saw his toes draw up tighter in his socks. He froze. He wanted to rush to Steve's side and hold him; he wanted to sob with relief and hold Steve until time stopped. Steve couldn't abide that right now; he was afraid of Bucky. Bucky was usually his world and now Steve stared like he was a lion prowling by.

He froze and waited; he knew Steve wouldn't shoot him. He still didn't know who had shot him in Nigeria, but he had to believe it wasn't Steve.

'Are you a handler?' Steve asked then, suspicious. Bucky's relief shifted into concern, little plans starting in his head. Apparently, Steve didn't know him at all.

'You're safe,' Bucky promised again, prefacing that, 'but there's no mission, so no handlers. You don't have a handler anymore and there's no mission.'

'There _is_ a mission,' Steve snapped, shaking the gun a little at Bucky, frantic and furious by a sudden turn. Bucky didn't flinch; he realized Steve's finger was not on the trigger, but was resting flat against its guard. He was aiming the gun as a threat, making Bucky keep his distance where he crouched, but he had no intention of shooting Bucky. 'There _is_ ; there's something and the other—the other handler is gonna do it if I don't find one.'

'The other handler?' Bucky demanded. 'What other—?'

'The man with the scars,' Steve said, confirming Bucky's suspicion. 'I knew his name, but I—I can't remember—I couldn't stop him.'  

'His name is Rumlow,' Bucky reminded Steve. He didn't know if the name would help Steve make sense of what was going on, but he didn't know what else to do. 'What do we need to stop Rumlow from doing?' He tried creeping closer again, now that he'd realized Steve wasn't actually ready to shoot him. Steve watched him carefully, then looked at the gun and nodded, as if deciding something. He shifted his grip, offering the handle of the gun out to Bucky. His palm was flaking too, covered in old blood like the rest of him. Bucky didn't understand how Steve had gotten to DC, covered in blood and brains, without detection. He didn't understand how, even wiped, Steve would believe for a second that Bucky might hurt him. Steve held out the gun expectantly, urgently, waiting for Bucky to take it.

'I don't want that,' Bucky said finally. Steve did not lower the grip he held out.

'Arming protocols: if the handler must arrive without appropriate means to decommission the weapon, means must be provided,' Steve told him. Bucky shook his head. Steve ignored him or didn't comprehend the nonverbal cue. Bucky felt acidic nausea roll deep in his chest. He couldn't hurt Steve; he didn't want to hurt Steve. He'd never wanted to hurt Steve. Even when they fought, he regretted landing a verbal blow too immediately.

'You're—You have to be a handler,' Steve insisted. 'This has to be a safehouse. The asset has to return to a safehouse and a handler will arrive to collect it,' Steve explained, shaking the handle of the gun at Bucky. He flinched this time. 'The asset returns to a safehouse,' Steve repeated, desperate. He looked near fit to cry. Bucky couldn't believe he was here. He couldn't believe Steve was trying to arm him; he couldn't believe that Steve could have been wiped and still known to come home.

' _Please_ ; I need help. I need to find a handler, please.' Bucky wondered what the cost had been, for whatever was left of Steve in that head right now, to convince the asset to come here. He wondered how Steve had even gotten in; one would have thought in this time of crisis that getting to DC from Ohio undetected was beyond the ability of someone so scrambled.

'I don't want the gun,' Bucky said honestly. 'I can help you without taking the gun. I'll help you.' Steve shook his head.

'No, I _need_ another handler,' Steve begged him, almost urgently. 'If this isn't—if you're not, then this isn't a safehouse—' Bucky's stomach roiled at the idea that Steve only trusted a safehouse if someone there had the means to kill him. '—but there's something happening, and I need another handler so I—the—him? The man with the scars? He's going on a mission.' Steve knew what Rumlow was up to, Bucky realised, even if he didn't know Bucky. 'I need orders, to stop him.'

'If I take the gun, will you stay?' he asked, risking it. Steve's face shifted into almost breathless relief. He looked like a stranger and himself at the same time. Bucky couldn't reconcile it: the familiar expression and the fact that this was not Steve, not at all.

'Yes,' the asset promised. 'Yes, please.' He reached the gun out a centimetre further, offering Bucky the key to his own destruction. 'Please,' he begged. 

Bucky took the gun into his hand. The metal felt unnaturally cold against his skin, the trigger guard falsely sharp against his index. He stood, gesturing for Steve to come out. Steve did, easily obedient, moving out of the closet's cover to kneel at Bucky's feet. Bucky looked down at him, having thought Steve would stand on his own. Steve simply stared up from where he knelt like a pet beside Bucky. He realized the asset would outwait God without an order. Bucky reached to offer him a hand because he couldn't force an order past the pointed, nervous lump in his throat. Steve let Bucky pull him up.

'The asset is ready to comply,' Steve told him. Bucky swallowed his revulsion; he hoped Steve couldn't see it on his face. He didn't want Steve to think Bucky was reviled, even if he was. He took his hand back. He looked at the gun in the other. He checked the safety—Steve hadn't clicked it off, not even to threaten Bucky—before dropping the full magazine out, checking the chamber for a bullet.

The asset watched him carefully. Bucky ignored the foreign weight of his everything's gaze. He wanted the gun out of his hands; it felt like his skin was touching something cold enough to kill the flesh it touched. He crossed to the desk and put both pieces in the top drawer. The asset didn't protest, but he followed Bucky to the desk.

Steve reached into one of the four pockets on the front of his coat. He'd taken his own jacket out of their closet and put it on over his blood-stained clothes; Bucky prayed: _please, God, let that be a good sign, let him come back to me, please_. He offered Bucky three extra magazines. Bucky hadn't let a gun in the apartment since Kate—since Sharon Carter had busted down his door to save Fury. He took the magazines from Steve. He put them with the rest of the gun.

He slid the drawer shut. It shut almost silently, too loud in the quiet between them.

'OK,' Bucky said to himself, trying to think rationally. A huge part of him wanted to call Melissa to help while his heart couldn't allow anything but _what do I do if he doesn't remember me this time? what if he's forgotten me for real?_ but he wasn't naïve. The Accords had been signed and a security force had been called up by the new committee to find Steve, arrest Rumlow. Steve was an object of an international manhunt. Bucky wasn't allowed to say _I found him, everybody; it's cool; thanks for looking out_. He didn't know the law. The Accords were nine thousand pages long, plus three amendments, so far, and he wasn't a lawyer.

Besides, he couldn't do what he'd done when trying to arrange a truth commission instead of a trial. There was no precedent for him to model to a T; there hadn't been something like a multinational, mass enlistment registry of superheroes before. He had read dozens of legal summaries for the layman while avoiding Secretary Ross. He'd read summaries meant for law students, trying to piece together a reason to trust the new system. He knew the untested interpretations of the untested law. They varied.

The interpretations _varied_.

Bucky couldn't be sure what he needed to do to keep Steve safe.

'Do you want to clean up? Have you eaten?' Bucky asked, because he could do that if nothing else. He looked over at Steve in the silence; the asset stared back.

'When's the last time you ate, Steve?' he asked again, asking while looking the asset dead in the eye. Steve didn't even blink at him; he didn't say anything, like the asset didn't know that question could be for him.

'Steve, how long has it been since you had something to eat?' he said again. Steve frowned, snapping out of his mechanical waiting. Even his posture shifted, his shoulders going softer under the jacket he wore. It was his own, a modern one that looked a little like the M-1943 jacket he'd worn after Azzano. There were other things in the pocket Steve had pulled the magazines from, in the other pockets too. Bucky wondered what the asset had stocked himself up with.

'Am I Steve?' the asset asked, pointing to his own chest. The gesture was so unlike the mechanic movements Steve made early in his recovery; he seemed exactly like himself while he asked who he was. Bucky nodded; his voice was stuck. 'Oh.' It did not sound like a revelation. It sounded like that meant nothing at all, as emotionally impactful as a bread recipe, like Bucky had told him something arbitrary and external. Steve looked away, his eyes sliding over everything and taking in nothing.

'Have you eaten since—since—' Bucky didn't know how to even ask. Since when? Since they had eaten at a little hole-in-the-wall breakfast place on their way to the police compound? Since he escaped Rumlow? What frame of time could Steve possibly have if Rumlow had fucked him up so bad he didn't know his own name, his own home, if he didn't know _Bucky_? How long had it been since he'd left Rumlow's side? Was Rumlow looking for him or tearing off to destroy something bigger?

'The asset does not exist without a mission,' Steve whispered. Bucky didn't know what to make of that.

'OK, sit down,' Bucky said, gesturing at the bed. Steve did, obedient. Bucky considered sitting next to him, but that felt too intimate. It burned his chest to imagine sitting next to Steve on the bed they were supposed to share, when Steve had armed him like a handler, like he expected Bucky could be capable of hurting him, or of shutting him down. Steve had been taken; Rumlow had snatched him away with nothing but a few words, and now, Bucky could tell, he'd been wiped. Rumlow had taken Steve with words and then tried to reclaim him for HYDRA, for his sick plans. Bucky rubbed his forehead; he needed that thought to stop and more productive ones to start flowing. 'OK, um, can you tell me—I mean, tell me what the fuck's going on, man.' Steve bit his lip; Bucky waited. Steve looked away, twisting his hands as he looked at Bucky's bedside reading lamp. He let out a terrified sound, a small desperate noise, and then cowered. 'Don't be scared,' Bucky said, too close to an order. He wondered as soon as the words popped out of his mouth if they were cruel; the asset had to follow orders but he had no way to stop being scared on command. 'I'm so sorry; sweetheart, it's OK.'

'I don't understand,' Steve told the lamp after another moment of terrified staring. 'The asset does not under—'

'How did you get here?' Bucky asked. Steve blinked hard, closing his eyes tight, thinking so hard Bucky could see gears trying to grind and turn. He turned from the lamp, back to Bucky, and eventually shook his head. 'You were in Ohio before. How did you get to DC?' Steve looked down at his hands where he'd circled one around his prosthetic wrist, frowning as he tried to find the answer for Bucky. At least he hadn't tried to offer Bucky his palm to cut and test.  

'The asset cannot retrieve transport parameters,' Steve told him eventually. He sounded like that made him want to cry. He shook his head and sniffed wetly. 'I don't remember; I don't know.'

'That's OK,' Bucky assured him, because he wasn't going to be familiar to the asset as a handler—he wouldn't do or say the right, harsh things—but he needed the asset to trust him enough to let him help Steve. 'That's fine, um. Do you know why you came here?' Bucky tried. Steve shifted nervously.  

'The asset cannot want, but, um—The asset didn't _want_ to go with him,' he said. His voice cracked and Bucky watched this stranger pull the same face Steve did when he was trying not to cry.

'I wanted him to stop,' he confessed; 'I wanted it to stop, but I couldn't move. I needed orders to stop—The handler told me to not to stop the bleeding, but then he told me to take the gun. I had to keep remembering the first order or I'd take the gun; I had to let him die or I'd kill him.'

'Did he make you kill someone, Steve?' Bucky asked, hoping to God Rumlow hadn't had that much control over Steve after Steve had done so much to get better. Steve shook his head, pausing horribly as he tried to decide. 

'I don't know,' Steve sobbed.

'OK,' Bucky said, shushing him. 'It's OK; that's fine.' He wanted to cradle Steve against his chest and let him cry this out, but Steve looked so fucking terrified sitting there and how could Bucky touch him when he was so scared? He must think Bucky could hurt him; he'd given Bucky the means to decommission him. 'Don't worry; we'll figure it out later, OK?'

'OK,' Steve agreed. He nodded desperately. 'Later.'

'You said the other handler was on a mission,' Bucky reminded him. Steve nodded again; he remembered that at least. 'Do you know what he's going to do?'

'Um, I know—I have the notebook,' Steve told him in place of an answer that made sense. 'Do you want it?'

'What notebook?' Bucky asked. Steve hesitated, and then he reached into his jacket. He pulled out a thin notebook he'd hidden behind the bulging pockets on his left side. Bucky looked at the dark, red leather against the bright red-and-blue of Steve's steady prosthetic hand. It seemed unreal, somehow. Steve's own hand shook and jerked back, like he was attached to an invisible puppet's string and someone was tugging him out of sight. Steve held the notebook in his prosthetic and managed to hold it out to Bucky. Bucky took it but Steve's trembling did not stop.

There was a black star embossed in the red leather; Bucky's mind drew up the Soviet star engraved and painted into Steve's old, metal arm. The red paint had faded and chipped away by the time Steve was an outpatient, but Bucky used to trace the five tips of the star when Steve slept across his chest and his mind wouldn't quiet enough for him to doze too. Those nights had been most of the few times he'd ever gotten to touch Steve's metal arm; Steve had been afraid of it. He traced the embossed leather. It did not escape him that the stars were exactly the same size. He opened it, but the letters were all Russian Cyrillic. He spoke a little Russian now, mostly enough to cook with Natasha in her native tongue. He didn't have any written skills practical enough to pick out more than a few words in neat, black ink.

'What's this notebook for?' Bucky asked, flipping thru the pages and pages of writing. Some pages held lists of words under titles; some pages had five lines of writing, someone's vital signs, and nothing more. Some pages had dates at the tops, full paragraphs written like a journal. He recognized the word for nutmeg in one of the lists, the numbers nine, one, and seventeen in another.

'It's the one Rumlow needs to wake them up,' Steve told him. Bucky closed the notebook and looked up at Steve; his thumb kept his page by habit.

'To wake up whom?' Bucky asked. There was a long silence. Bucky felt, quite suddenly and all the way to his bones, as cold as he had that first day in New York City in twenty-eleven. Steve wouldn't look at him. 'Who was he trying to wake up?'

'The others,' Steve told him, finally, whispering. That meant next to nothing.

'Who are they?' Bucky asked again, clarifying. Steve blinked wetness out of his eyes. Bucky held back the urge to lean forward, reach out, and sweep the tears away. Their dampness tracked a pathetic attempt at cleansing thru the bloodstains on his cheeks.

'The Winter Soldiers,' Steve said, and Bucky's heart skipped. 'I'm not the only weapon they made.'


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The asset had searched all the rooms when it had arrived for a way to tell a handler it had returned to rendezvous, but there weren't any bugs in the lamps or the walls or the outlets. There weren't any weapons in the house, just kitchen knives and a shield. There weren't any panic buttons. There were bookshelves filled with real, dog-eared books, and something inside the asset had said:_ this one's mine; that one's his. _It didn't own things. It didn't belong in a mutual space with someone else's property intermingled amongst their own; the asset didn't exist without a mission. The asset did not own things. None of the things that came close to the asset's belongings were here: there weren't any magnetic restraints here, nor a cryochamber, nor a surgical table with straps or a cabinet with maps of his brain. There were paintings hiding nothing in the walls behind them, and a basket of unfinished knitting, and a photo of the asset on a credenza where his keys were supposed to go..._

The asset became aware. It panicked for a moment before it remembered its orders. A gentle handler had told him to wait here; he hadn't said so, but he was in the hallway reporting their rendezvous to whomever handlers might aim the asset to the will of. This handler wasn't quite that; the handler who had brought the asset to this rendezvous wasn't quite either. The asset shouldn't remember patches of many things; it remembered a fern and someone's hand tangled in his sleeve and the sound of someone's sister laughing.

It looked around, at the enormous bedroom. The mattress was soft, tucked into a wooden frame, with sheets and nice pillows and something the asset knew as a comforter. The handler was pacing the hallway out the open door. The handler had a small phone to his ear; he kept glancing back at the asset like he thought the asset would disappear.

It didn't make sense, the worry. The asset would not disappear. The asset would wait; it would wait on this soft bed that made it want to lie down. This wasn't what it had thought the safehouse would be like; there were paintings and photos on the walls, warm blankets, even in the living room, and a large, soft bed. The asset had not expected to wait for over a day for a handler. It was not used to homes, real homes, with full, real kitchens and a broom left out. There were clothes here. The asset had the only weapons. The knife collection was spare, seemingly really for cooking. There were different types of flour and different types of sugar. There was a sketchbook that belonged to the asset, but the asset could not own. Weapons did not own. The asset did not exist without a mission.

The asset had searched all the rooms when it had arrived for a way to tell a handler it had returned to rendezvous, but there weren't any bugs in the lamps or the walls or the outlets. There weren't any weapons in the house, just kitchen knives and a shield. There weren't any panic buttons. There were bookshelves filled with real, dog-eared books, and something inside the asset had said: _this one's mine; that one's his_. It didn't own things. It didn't belong in a mutual space with someone else's property intermingled amongst their own; the asset didn't exist without a mission. The asset did not own things. None of the things that came close to the asset's belongings were here: there weren't any magnetic restraints here, nor a cryochamber, nor a surgical table with straps or a cabinet with maps of his brain. There were paintings hiding nothing in the walls behind them, and a basket of unfinished knitting, and a photo of the asset on a credenza where his keys were supposed to go.

The asset remembered stopping in its search for a beacon to activate or a bug to trigger, at that desk. The asset had gone thru all its pockets at the desk, looking for a set of keys, house keys it was meant to leave there. There was a notebook with reminders on the desk too, reminders to check before leaving the house, in neat printing that the asset thought might be its own. The asset didn't know if it knew how to write. It knew it could read. It had read easily the list of essentials at the top:

ORAN - REMEMBER TO BRING :  
YELLOW INHALER  
BLUE INHALER  
TOOTHBRUSH/PASTE  
KEYS  
PHONE CHARGER  
WALLET  
COAT/BAG  
PHONE

Something in the asset had told it to pat its pockets and then drove the asset, when it came up empty handed, to add a few lines below the list: LOST MY KEYS. The weapon had written it when it had first come home; it still wondered what programme so passively let him know what to do, like a habit. The asset should not have habits. The asset did not exist without a mission. The asset should not be able to wonder, yet here it sat, on the bed it swore it had slept in. Weapons did not rest. Weapons did not sleep, and yet the asset knew what it was to wake up in this spot, tucked under the covers with someone's back pressed into its front.

'I have stayed out of it,' the handler reported into the phone. 'I went stateside like everybody said I should.' The handler listened to the voice on the other side of the call.

The asset knew it should ask for maintenance now, while the line was open, was maybe secure, especially since there was no recalibration unit in this safehouse. The asset wasn't built to remember things but its head was full of fragments and feelings and things too close to thoughts. Something in the asset didn't want to ask for maintenance. It shouldn't have to ask for maintenance, it thought miserably. The asset was waiting. It was doing what it was told, and it had already escaped once; it didn't need to escape from here. It was safe here. It should ask this handler for help; the handler would know how to stop the weapon from hurting people.

'I don't know, Nat; it's not like I put up the Bat-Signal or something. He was just here when I came home.' Home meant something; the asset felt a shock of pain when it tried to think of what. It held in a whimper, giving its head a shake for good measure. It wanted to shake the idea of home out so it would stop hurting.

The asset had to wait where it had been instructed; those were orders. The handler would come back and they would stop the man with the scars. They would complete the mission.

'No, I haven't,' the handler replied, to whoever was on the other line. The asset tried to open its eyes; light stung and the eyes had to blink hard before they could look up at the handler in the hall. The asset remembered him, but it didn't remember the safehouses ever looking like this. It remembered abandoned basements and a disused bank vault; it didn't remember safehouses that smelled like cake flour and felt like home. 'It didn't even occur to me— _Because I'm losing my God damned mind, Natasha_! Do you have any _idea_ —How could it occur to me to ask him that; he's been _wiped_ and I can't fucking _think_ about anything else but that!'

'I _do_ need to calm down,' the handler agreed frantically. 'I absolutely need to— _Fuck_! He's been wiped; Nat, Rumlow baked someone else's brain into his hair, scrambled him all over again. Now— _now_!' The handler didn't say what would happen now. The asset waited. _That's awful, to be wiped with someone else's brain in your hair,_ the asset thought. The asset wondered who that had happened to; it sounded like a real horror. It wondered if it needed to be frantic too. It felt safe here.

The handler glanced back again, checking nervously before pacing out of sight. Maybe the asset could move if it tried, it thought, if the handler had to keep checking. The asset turned on the mattress, looking over at the sketchbook on a little table on the other side of the bed. The asset wanted the book, but the handler had told it to wait. The asset wanted to look at the pictures in the sketchbook, to see if it really did know the order of the sketches inside, but it didn't know how to go over there to get it without disobeying the order to wait. The asset wanted to know how it knew what would be on the next page of the book without looking. It wanted to know if it was right. It had orders to sit, to wait. The asset turned from the little table and looked back at the hall. It thought about the drawings in the book, and it waited. It should not be able to think, but it could.

'No,' the handler sighed into the phone, out of sight. 'I can't be sure, but I don't think he recognizes me at all.' The asset didn't say anything, but it did recognize the handler. He did look familiar. The asset remembered his dark hair, his smile. The asset knew what his laugh would sound like, but the asset did not laugh. The asset leaned a little, making sure the handler couldn't see it from where he'd gone. The handler was leaning against the wall of the hallway, rubbing one hand over his eyes. The asset settled back where it had been told to wait.

The asset reached into the right pocket of the coat it had found and pulled out the photo it had taken off the small table by the door. It had broken the frame when it had tried to open it to get the photo; the pieces had been hidden in the closet. The asset unfolded the glossy cardstock as surreptitiously as it could. There was the handler in the photo; it really was him, the asset decided. The hurt of deciding made it look away from the photo while the vision swam and faded.

It looked like the asset in the photo, too, it decided without checking. The asset knew. The asset wondered why anyone would have taken a photo of it, especially one like this, not documenting anything, but just a picture of two people standing. Why would a handler, especially, have a photo of the asset? Why would he have tossed his arm over the asset's shoulders like that? The asset wasn't human; the asset did not exist without a mission. _I exist; that photo's from Before_ , some traitorous thought whispered. The asset thought about Before. Its eyes focused.

Before had happened. Before existed; the asset had been with Rumlow before. The arm had been sharp before. It remembered the arm ripping and cutting and pinching; the asset remembered the arm had been designed to deflect blades and bullets and make impervious HYDRA's fist. The asset's arm was meant to be a weapon, but it was soft and blue now. It was plastic or something like it, and something gentle and soft and sensitive covered the spaces between the red frame like skin might have. The asset didn't understand it; the asset could touch things and really feel them. The asset was not meant to exist with feeling but it could feel soft things and it felt something when it looked at the photo, or when it listened to the voice in its head, not the programme.

The programme was supposed to be all there was. It was supposed to be stronger than a voice in its head, stronger than the asset even. It could remember—It could remember a person—trying to warn someone and the programme disallowing it. It could remember trying to escape the handler twice before it had been able to—to do something. What had it done? It must have done something, because the asset was here. The asset could try to do things now; it didn't reach for the sketchbook it wanted, but it didn't feel a crippling pressure at the idea. The asset realized it had an idea at all. It had an idea.

 _What the fuck,_ the asset thought. The asset _thought_. The asset didn't understand what had gone wrong. Maybe it was broken. It was supposed to say something when it was broken; it was supposed to ask for system maintenance but it couldn't remember how, or why it would. Thinking was good; it wasn't supposed to hurt like this. It couldn't remember what system errors meant deciding or feeling; it didn't know what to report for recalibration.

It didn't want to ask for maintenance. That was more terrifying than anything.

Time has gone by, the traitorous voice told the asset. The asset believed the voice because there was supposed to be more to the programme; maybe the voice in its head was the missing piece. The asset believed the voice because the arm was not an effective weapon; something had changed. Its arm was not a weapon and its hair was long, dirty, and awful. _I'm not a weapon anymore._ That idea set fear into the asset's bones; it wasn't allowed to have ideas. It wasn't allowed to think like this but the programme that usually stopped it did not pop up. Nothing stopped it from staring at the photo and feeling.

'Um, no, he does, but he's also using first-person,' Bucky said in the hall. 'No, I don't know; he's spoken English when he's spoken at all.' _Bucky_ , he thought, echoing the name that had come out of nowhere.

The asset frowned, looking up from the photo. The asset wondered where that name had come from. The handler started to look back and the asset folded the glossy cardstock hurriedly, as if it could tuck the photo behind its hands quick enough to hide it. The handler's eyes flicked to the folded paper and back up to the asset's eyes, but he didn't challenge anything. He turned away again, slowly, like he knew he had intruded on something. The asset risked the odd, past version of itself one last glance, making sure it was in fact standing close and safe to the handler now in the hall. It really was Bucky in the photo; it really was.

The asset hurried to get the photo away. It was his, not anyone else's. It snapped two closures on its pocket tightly. The asset didn't want to share it with the handler, even if the handler was Bucky. The asset didn't understand what Bucky was; it didn't know if Bucky would let him keep the photo or if Bucky would take it and hide it like he'd hidden the weapon the asset had brought him. The asset knew the handler's name and the voice behind the programme trusted everything Bucky said. Maybe the asset could too, even if it wasn't ready to share the photo with a handler.

'Yeah. OK,' Bucky said into the phone. 'We can wait that long. All the curtains were pulled; I assume no one saw him get in since the Feds aren't swarming. We're not leaving here.' The handler turned back to stare thru the open door at the asset. 'Yeah, I checked for bugs since I've been back; there's nothing I can find.'

'Yeah, we'll bet fifteen bucks on it, dick,' Bucky said. 'Make sure you bring exact change. And Nat? Thank you. You have no idea how much this means; thank you.' He listened for a bare moment, then lowered his phone.

The asset hadn't moved, not really. It had waited. It tensed for punishment as the handler came back nonetheless. The voice didn't say anything but it tried to reach out to Bucky, tried to hold out a hand and ask if everything was gonna be OK. It knew Bucky would hold the asset's hand tenderly if it could only reach out. The asset didn't understand the impulse; it scared the asset enough to drop its chin and cower. The asset's hair was too matted by something to fall forward to hide it from the handler at all. The asset couldn't reach out and it wanted to.

'Hiya, sweetheart,' Bucky murmured, sitting back in the wooden chair a few feet away. He couldn't reach the asset from there, let alone punish it. The asset looked up, suspicious. The handler balanced his elbows on his knees, linked his fingers. He sighed. The asset swore it had seen him do that a thousand times; the asset didn't know why and that sent shivers down his spine. 'I think we should get you cleaned up, and then we should get you something to eat. How's that sound?'

'Cleaned up?' the asset echoed.

'Yeah,' Bucky replied. 'Get you washed up, get you in some clean clothes; how does that sound?' The asset didn't know what to say so it said nothing. Some sort of feeling rose up in a wave from the part of the head where its voice lived. The asset wanted to cry; clean clothes sounded so _nice_ and he didn't even know what they were. There was something that needed to be cleaned; something had happened; the asset was not built to remember, but it almost could. It could almost remember what had happened, how it had—gotten here? gotten built? what?

'Are you up for a shower?' the handler asked. 'Or do you want me to run you a bath?' The asset realised the question was directed at it.

'I don't know,' the voice managed. The asset remembered showers, but it also remembered the water closet at the end of the building's hall, with the two taps and a toilet; it remembered hauling a sloshing basin of almost-hot water back to—to somewhere. The asset remembered it used to live somewhere different than this. The asset did not live. The image faded from its head and the asset looked at the hands like they might hold it. The handler said something else, but the asset couldn't hear it. It frowned.

'Um. Is this blood?' the asset asked, holding out a palm. It was like wake-up procedure, it realized, holding the palm out like this. Maybe it was the asset's blood, but Bucky wouldn't hurt the asset; the asset could remember everything this handler had done since it had tugged open the closet door to reveal itself. The handler hadn't hurt the asset at all, but the hair was matted down with something and the hand was stained.

'Yeah, it's blood,' Bucky said, like a reminder. 'I think it's someone else's.' He didn't take the asset's hand; he had never tried to cut the hand either, so the asset took it back. The asset nodded, looking down at its palm. The asset wished it could ask the handler to hold it, because if this handler tucked the asset underarm it would be safe. The confusing and sick feeling in its belly would quiet in Bucky's arms; the certainty with which the asset knew this was a terror. The asset did not understand. After a moment, the handler said gently: 'You should think about washing it off. Do you want to do that?'

The asset nodded again; it knew an order when it heard one, even if the handler was trying to hide the command in a question. The asset didn't understand the questions; the asset wasn't meant to have a choice, but it had left Rumlow the handler and come to this bizarre rendezvous that almost felt like home. It had made that choice. It stood, ready to comply. The handler offered a warm smile. The asset knew that smile; it usually wasn't so sad.

'Bucky.'

'Yeah, that's me,' the handler promised. 'You're Steve.' He stood too, motioning for the asset to follow. The asset didn't understand why the handler was being so gentle. The other handler had dragged him by his hair. 'Come and pick something clean to wear; come 'ere.'

The asset went because it couldn't resist this person. The handler showed a few shirts, telling the asset they belonged to him, that it could wear any one it preferred. He asked which one the asset wanted; he waited, looking the asset right in the eye like it could choose. The asset shook its head; the question made it feel frightened and feeling anything at all scared it worse. The asset didn't understand why the handler would offer it a choice when the programme—The programme was supposed to control everything, but the asset had wanted the sketchbook without a protocol telling it to collect it. It had wanted to lie down, but weapons did not sleep. It had stolen the photo without orders; it had come to this safehouse without orders. The asset had escaped the other handler too late to save anyone.

'We have to stop him,' the asset blurted. 'The man with the scars. He'll wake them up.'

'I know,' Bucky promised. 'Help's coming, Steve; I promise. Sam is coming, and so is Natasha. They'll help you and they'll help us stop him.'

'Am I Steve?' the asset asked. The handler blinked at it and swallowed nervously.

'Yeah, you're Steve,' Bucky said. Something sounded strained in his voice; the asset could tell the handler was upset. There shouldn't be emotion; there should be nothing until the mission. 'You're a person and your name is Steve.'

The asset felt his eyes tighten at that, suspicious. The handler looked away. 'How 'bout this?' he asked. He held up some clothes. 'Comfy, warm? You like blue.' The asset didn't say anything; it was not allowed choice. It didn't matter. It stared at the handler's lips and wondered if the image of those lips in charcoal had come from its own head, instead of agreeing: _yes, I like blue_. The handler sighed again, eventually, and shut the drawers. He carried the comfy, warm clothing away with a soft word, beckoning.

The asset let Bucky lead it to a bathroom and listened to the handler speak in a gentle voice, broadcasting his movements and never, never scaring anything more than what was made out of fear. The asset didn't understand that; it was used to too-cold water and gritty soap, to rough cloth. It remembered submitting to eye rinses that burned as much as whatever they were rinsing out. The asset listened to the explanation of the water controls and the bottles on the shelf of the shower. It accepted an empty bag for the clothes with blood on them. Like the rest of the safehouse, the room was both exactly like what the asset had known the home would be, and nothing at all like the safehouse it had thought it would find.

The asset knew how handlers should treat it. It remembered being hosed down, rinsed of cyrogel while handlers tugged its head this way and that, like a dog. It remembered cool cloths on the back of its neck when it was sick, soft voices and gentle hands without ulterior motive; the asset was a weapon and weapons did not get sick or get comfort. The asset remembered brushing its teeth at this sink: impossible. It felt a whimper break from inside its throat, staring at the faucet, and it regretted the sound when the handler shot him an unreadable look.

'You all right?' Bucky asked. 'What can I do?' The handler reached out as if to touch the asset.

The asset flinched, even if the broken part of the system wanted to lean closer and cry. Bucky snapped his hand away and took two steps back. The asset wished it weren't so afraid; something wanted to tuck itself into Bucky's chest but fear kept back any possibility of seeking out comfort. Fear was allowed; fear made the asset docile for the handlers. The asset knew handlers did not help with pain or fear, but something inside it insisted that Bucky could. The handler nodded to himself, looking like the flinch had cut him to the core. The asset hadn't wanted to hurt him; the asset didn't want to hurt anyone. The handler patted the towel he'd placed next to the folded clothes on the vanity. The asset couldn't believe the distance between them.

'Do you think you can start the shower?' Bucky asked, gesturing to the simple controls without meeting the asset's eye. The asset nodded. 'OK, so I'll—uh. I'll leave you to it, then.' _No_ , the asset thought. Bucky couldn't leave. The asset needed help and Bucky wouldn't hurt him. He tried to tell the handler to stay, to help him get the blood off, but he couldn't ask for anything without asking for system maintenance first. The asset had to keep his mouth shut or the memories it thought it might have would be taken away by maintenance. The asset stayed quiet; it felt a corner of its mouth twist.

The handler hesitated, and then left. He closed the door behind himself and the asset gasped.

The door was closed.

The door was closed and the asset didn't know if it opened from this side; it was trapped; it was trapped; it'd be stuck in here forever, alone and unable to get out, trapped until it lost its mind again and couldn't tell it's own screaming from anything real or anyone else's. It would be like Before, when it was trapped somewhere so small it couldn't sit up or lie down; it would be trapped where it was small and dark and cold and the asset would lose its mind in there. The asset gasped. Its breaths shook and it couldn't stop them from coming too fast, too urgent. It turned its head, staring at the tiny room that seemed much tinier without the handler to keep it safe. There was no other way out; it was locked in.

'No,' someone said, 'please, no.'

The asset stumbled forward and forced its flat palm to bang on the door. It pounded the door rapidly, desperate. The handler opened the door immediately, and the asset scrambled four steps back. It nearly fell; it cowered against the wall. It was not trying to escape; it did not want the handler to think it was trying to escape. It just didn't want to be trapped. It didn't want to be punished. It had escaped already to come here; it wouldn't escape again. It tried to slow its heaving breath.

'What is it?' Bucky asked. His expression was urgent but the asset couldn't understand any more than that. The asset felt a whimper again, the noise breaking out despite itself. It felt its hand circle his odd, sensitive, fake wrist. It didn't understand, and this should have felt like home. 'Stevie, what's wrong?' The asset realized it did know what look the handler wore: he was concerned, worried even, about the asset.

'What if I can't get out?' the asset confessed, deciding to trust, to admit a weakness to a handler. Bucky's face shifted, and Steve hated seeing him sad.

'How 'bout we leave it like this?' Bucky suggested kindly, pulling the door shut until there were only a half dozen inches between the door and its jamb. The asset leaned, nervous, peering thru the space at Bucky. How could it be safe in such a small space if Bucky wasn't going to stay? Wouldn't it be trapped? Wouldn't it start to suffocate as someone held its head under the water, if it was alone and the handlers came for it here? The asset wasn't enough to get out of a small room like this; small rooms meant confinement.

'Or this?' Bucky added, pushing the door back open, enough that the asset didn't have to crane its neck to meet Bucky's eyes, but that most of the outside room had no eye-line to it. 'Is that OK?'

The asset considered. It wanted Bucky to stay but it wasn't allowed to ask for something like that. It was afraid to ask for anything when the programme would insist it needed maintenance. There wasn't a recalibration unit here so maybe the handler would send the asset away, to a place with bugs and cameras and high windows that were dark, with only watchful, commanding shadows behind them. It hesitated.

The weapon checked the room behind it again. The asset guessed it wasn't so scary. It had showered here before. It had showered with Bucky before, even. It thought they'd showered in tired times and morning times and times filled with heat and wet and touch the asset couldn't understand. The memories didn't make any sense; they felt impossible and came only in brief threads. The asset looked back thru the gap in the door. It could fit thru the gap if it twisted its shoulders a bit. It wasn't trapped.

'Is this OK?' Bucky asked again. The asset was compelled to nod; it couldn't deny the handler twice. It would hurt too much. It had no choice. 'I'm gonna be right outside. Nothing and nobody here is gonna hurt you.' Bucky's hand left the door before the asset could reach out to hold it like it wanted too. It failed to reach out and failure had never happened before. _No,_ it thought, _Bucky is not a mission_. 'You're safe in there,' Bucky told the asset. 'I promise. I'm out here keeping watch, so you're safe, OK? Wash off the blood and get dressed in the clean clothes, matoki.'

'Clothes with blood in the bag,' the asset finished. It remembered. It remembered the disguised orders Bucky gave it and it remembered Bucky had promised to stop Rumlow. 'The asset—Safe here,' it said, making sure. Bucky smiled, even if his eyes were sad.

'That's right,' Bucky promised. The asset nodded too, echoing Bucky. 'You're safe. Wash up, OK?'

'OK,' it agreed. The handler left again.

The room wasn't so small now that the door was open. The implant in its head could hear Bucky moving around in the bedroom outside.

The asset supposed it should wash, like it had been told. It took off the jacket. The asset inspected it. It did not have blood on it. The blood over the asset's head and clothes had dried by the time the asset found this jacket; the asset thought it might have been days ago that the blood was spilt over it. The asset hung the jacket on the cabinet door. It looked down at the shirt, the pants. They were both bloody. The knee of the pants was torn thru. The asset couldn't remember where it had fallen to rip the pants. It remembered the recalibration unit and the chair and the dangling man and watching a man bleed to death on a carpet. It remembered a name tag: _SOFIA_. The images flashed thru the asset's head like lightning rolling over the plains; for a moment, the blood felt wet and hot and slick.

It gasped. The feeling went away. The blood was flaky and coppered-brown.

It looked up, into a mirror. A face looked back at it, dark bloodstains over pale skin and longish hair matted and gunked with the same colour and other things too. It must be the asset's face in the glass. It wondered why the men who had built it had bothered with a face. Wondering hurt. The blood was dry. Whatever the mission was: it was over and the asset kept existing. Maintenance was required.

The asset picked a piece of something from its hair; the asset looked at the piece, holding it between two of its own fingers.

It was bone, the asset realized, a piece of someone's skull. The asset dropped the bone shard into the empty sink as it positively lost control of its hands. It clattered loudly in the small room. The asset backed away from the bone but the wall was right there; the room was too small. The asset realised it was him in the mirror; the stuff matting down its hair was brain and blood and bone. He felt a violent gag wrack his system, repelled and horrified, forcefully enough to make it stumble forward, to lose bile and saliva into the sink. Some of its hair fell forward in time to catch the crunchy ends in bile and spit; the asset felt disgusted and shaky as it spat what else was in its mouth, pathetically trying to get rid of the thick strings trailing from its lips.

It blinked and it was sitting on the floor. It could hear the faucet running at the sink in front of it; it didn't know where it was or who was standing at the sink. The asset coughed, but the sour taste across the back of its tongue didn't leave. It cowered away from the person standing at the sink, and they turned and crouched to the asset in response to its cries. It should have stayed silent; how stupid, stupid.  
  
'Steve, it's all right,' she said.

'I know you,' he said, even if he couldn't stop cowering away from her, against the wall and the corner of the shower. The asset remembered suddenly, like the first image under a searchlight, the young, black guard whose head had exploded into pieces and spray: dead before he hit the ground. He'd been there to protect the asset. He'd died for the asset. He'd died because the asset hadn't been strong enough to warn him and the asset hadn't even remembered him until now. The asset had just let him die, for nothing, trying to protect someone who didn't even exist.

He felt sick.  
  
He felt sick. His hands were covered in blood. He could feel himself crying as Rumlow forced his hands back down to his food.

'You're really trying my patience here, kid,' the handler told him. The handler reached out to the asset's disgusting hair and performed a mockery of ruffling, like the asset was his little brother. 'It's fine; food's good. Eat.' Rumlow drew his hand back and tossed another fry into his mouth.

The asset tried to make its own hands cooperate but the metal arm was missing and this new one responded differently enough to feel strange. The asset could taste blood and salt and the texture of the meat seemed awful when its hands were slick with red. The blood soaking him had been warm just seconds ago—There were handprints on the bun; his hands were covered in blood—maybe he'd even killed her himself—

'—hear me?' a woman's voice asked.  
  
'Nat,' he gasped. He could hear her. His hands were bloody, covered in evidence of how badly he'd failed to be a person, how badly he'd become something cruel again. 'Please, I can't—I need—' He needed help; he needed this to stop. Maybe the ice would take it all away; maybe the mission was over. He could stop existing; he could just go away.   
  
'The blood's gonna come out, Steve; you just have to get into the water,' she said. Her hands were gentle against his body—he couldn't tell where her hand was; he just felt it touch him lightly—as she tried to encourage him out of the corner he'd pushed himself into. 'I know it's scary, but it's not gonna burn; you're gonna be able to breathe just fine.'

'I want it gone,' he sobbed. 'Please, help me—Make it stop; I want it gone.' His voice sounded so roughly upset, ragged and wet, that it frightened him. His hands reached up and tugged, trying to rip the mats of blood from his hair. He was free of his bloody clothing, but he could feel himself resisting her gentle hands on his wrists as she tried to stop him from ripping his hair out. His voice kept going but he couldn't understand it. He didn't know if it was the language stopping him from understanding his voice or the panic.

'Stay still,' she said. It froze him. It froze him cold and shaking until he understood she was only cutting his hair, cutting it with quiet scissors instead of loudly buzzing and dull blades. He reached out and found her knee with his hand. He gripped his fingers into her pants, holding tight. 'It's all right. You're safe.'

He closed his eyes and let himself lose track.

^^^

Bucky felt a little uncomfortable in the back of Sam's car, on their way to an airfield in Maryland. No one had brought up that Clint was on his way, out of retirement without hesitation, while Bucky wasn't sure if he should stay with Steve or go with Nat and the rest to find Rumlow and end this.

The night was cool as it spilt thru the front's open windows. Nat had fallen asleep in the passenger seat; Bucky reckoned she hadn't slept more than three hours at a time since this whole thing began. The airfield was less than an hour away.

Sam looked tired too where he drove, easily focused but restlessly tapping the steering wheel to stay that way. Bucky knew how exhausting being a sickbed companion could be, even if he had healed enough for discharge in only a handful of days. Sam had to be tired too, and he was too good of a friend to let Bucky drive. Bucky wasn't even a good enough friend to appreciate it; he was filled with dread that got heavier with every mile marker they passed.

'Am I allowed to ask you something?'

Steve's whisper broke the silence, his voice nervously meeting Bucky's ears. He looked away from where he'd been watching the shifting roadside light dance across Nat's cheek. Steve snapped his eyes away when Bucky looked, like he had that first night at Tony's. He'd made Nat cut the matted blood and brains out of his hair; Bucky hadn't seen him with hair this short since deprogramming. It meant Bucky could still see his face, even when he looked away and ducked his chin as if to hide. 

'Always,' Bucky assured him. The radio was soft enough that it was mostly background noise, like the sound of pavement passing beneath them. Steve didn't ask anything but kept frowning at Bucky's knees. Bucky heaved a sigh. It did not settle his nerves, like every other sigh over the past week. He wondered when he'd stop feeling the bullet wounds against his shirt with every breath. They were perfect scars now; soon they would start to fade. _They'll fade_ , Bucky told himself, _and Steve will remember you. He'll come back._ He didn't know if Steve could; he'd fought so hard and so long, and Bucky knew Rumlow didn't have the support staff which usually monitored the health of the asset's brain and nerves. Steve had lost some memories and abilities forever the first time around. Bucky had to think he'd let things get worse. 

'You can ask as many questions as you'd like,' Bucky offered, after too many moments of silence, thinking maybe that was the source of the delay. Steve looked up again at that; Bucky had read his hesitancy correctly. Bucky turned a little in the backseat to face him more, watching Steve carefully.

Without a limit, Steve met his eye and asked straightforwardly: 'Is there a word for what he did to that man?' Bucky blinked.

'What Rumlow did?' Bucky clarified.

'The man with the scars,' Steve whispered. 'I used to know him, I think. He was different. Is that his name?'

'Rumlow, yeah,' Bucky said. 'Brock Rumlow.'

'Is there a word for what he did to that man?' Steve asked, still hushed. Bucky wasn't sure if he was surprised at all that this was Steve's first, most pressing question. He knew who Steve meant; he'd heard that Rumlow had hung and flayed someone while Steve was strapped to an old recalibration unit Bucky had failed to find.

'Torture,' Bucky supplied, just as quietly. 'Rumlow tortured that man. Waterboarded him, strung him up, and skinned him.' Steve nodded as he turned back to himself and considered the new words he'd been given. Bucky thought for a moment he saw Steve mouthing the words to himself: _torture, skinned_. Steve frowned and thought, shifting uncomfortably like he was being crushed around the middle. Bucky wondered how much pain Rumlow had reinstalled into Steve's thinking. He remembered how much it had hurt Steve to think when he had first come home, when Tony had found him on the riverside and brought him back. Bucky hoped Steve wasn't hurting like that now.

'I think he's done it to me, too,' Steve admitted, eventually, after Bucky stopped counting how many silent seconds there had been.

'He has,' Bucky confirmed.

'How do you know?' Steve asked. And then, like it was nothing out of the ordinary, he asked: 'Did you help?'

'No! God, no,' Bucky cried, almost snapping at Steve. 'I have never hurt you like that, no—not—nothing close. You told me.' Steve didn't seem to notice how he'd brushed something sensitive or that he'd made nausea swim thru Bucky at the mere idea of hurting Steve like that.

'I know you?' Steve asked.

'You know me, yeah,' Bucky agreed. Steve looked terribly sceptical. It was worse than the mechanical expression of the asset when Bucky had first found him; Bucky knew every frown and grimace Steve made and it didn't look like Steve trusted him at all.

'But you're not a handler,' Steve said after an awkward pause, like it was the hardest part of any of this to stomach or believe.

'No,' Bucky replied immediately.

'Then why would the asset know you?'

'I don't know what to tell you, Steve. We grew up together. You're not just the asset. You don't have to be the asset at all,' Bucky said. He ignored how badly it fucking hurt his heart to have Steve sitting next to him like that, asking questions like that. 'Yeah, we know each other; no, I'm not a doctor, or a handler. I'm your friend. You can trust me.'

Steve needed to sleep too, like Nat in the front; it had been thirty-six hours and usually, Bucky noticed Steve having a harder time thinking and choosing after eighteen. He wondered if sleep would bring Steve back to him, even a little, even to something like what he had been those first months in deprogramming, anything but this person who spoke and looked like Steve but didn't know Bucky from Adam. It was hard, with Steve mostly speaking easily and without wincing, but as unknown to Bucky as his worst days, in the beginning, could make him. It had been ages since Bucky had been a stranger to Steve. He didn't know how to handle it anymore. He didn't know how he ever did.

'Weapons do not have friends,' Steve said.

'You weren't always a weapon,' Bucky told him. 'You're not a weapon now. We used to be small together; do you remember?'

'Really?'

'Swear to God, Stevie,' Bucky promised. 'Once upon a time, you were my best guy and nothing else.'

'That sounds nice,' Steve said. Bucky huffed, almost a laugh, even if he couldn't manage it past the lump of glass in his throat. 'Stevie. What's that?'

'Uh, it's your name,' Bucky told him. 'Nickname, I guess. I got a lot of nicknames for you, sweetheart.'

'Sweetheart,' Steve repeated. 'Bucky.'

'Yeah?' he asked, looking over, hopeful suddenly.

'That's your name,' Steve informed him, offering him a proud smile. It warmed Bucky's bones, filling him like golden sunshine, before he cooled and worried again.

Bucky didn't know if he'd told Steve or if Steve had remembered on his own.

As Bucky berated himself for being such a panicked spouse as to not keep track of something so simple, Steve's smile faded and he looked at Sam and Nat. 'Do you think we can still beat him there?' Steve asked, as if he were going to follow when the Avengers went after Rumlow. Bucky thought it figured Steve were that brave. He didn't know if he could be.

'I hope so,' Bucky said anyway.

'Do you know why—' Steve broke off.

'Know why?' Bucky pressed lightly. Steve didn't say anything, purposely staring at any part of Bucky but his eyes out of the corner of his own. 'You know more about what Rumlow's up to than I do,' Bucky tried, guessing.

'I feel really—The asset is not meant to feel, but I do,' Steve said, whispering, a little desperately, like Bucky were the last hope adrift at sea. 'I feel—' Bucky didn't know what that meant, that Steve felt. He stared, trying to hide how furiously he hoped Steve felt about him, remembered him, who they were to each other. 

'Feel what?' Bucky asked. Steve stared at Bucky's knee, nervously chewing his top lip for a brief a human second. Eventually, he shook his head. He looked away.

'System maintenance is required,' the asset reported, and Bucky felt the air between them shift as something mechanical took over. Bucky watched Steve stare out the windshield, take in the road, that they were moving. He watched the expressions he recognized melt away; Steve was gone, and Bucky had waited so long while he healed before. He could scarcely imagine Steve could survive it again. 'Unknown protocols, unknown mission.'

'You're a person,' Bucky promised, helplessly. He wanted to touch Steve, but he was so afraid his everything might flinch away from him again. 'There is no mission; you're not a weapon.' The asset did not reply. Bucky didn't know what he could do to soothe Steve. Steve had been so wary of him when he'd first appeared in the apartment; Bucky didn't know if Steve really recognised them from their history or from their time together since he was last wiped. Bucky had failed, had failed Steve so badly, by letting this happen to him again. All he could do was lamely promise: 'You're allowed to feel things and think things; you're a person.'

'Can—Permission?' Steve whispered, breaking his eyes even further from Bucky.

'Of course,' Bucky said, giving it, without asking, without doubting. He'd let Steve do anything, especially now that Bucky would be spending his life making up for letting this happen again. He would have let Steve finish the last mission Pierce gave him, but Steve just slid across the bench seat in the back of the Toyota. He came closer. Bucky couldn't believe it. Steve laid his head onto Bucky's shoulder. His eyes prickled. 

'Tired,' Steve said, hesitantly, ever so gently and slowly trusting the weight of his head onto Bucky. He didn't tuck himself under Bucky's arm; he didn't reach for Bucky's hand. Bucky swallowed back the hopeful sob that wanted to break out. He resisted the urge to haul Steve into him, to fold him into the position they used when they watched TV alone together, tangling their feet in the footwell like they usually did the end of the couch. He resisted the urge to take Steve and hold tightly. 'Weapons do not—' Steve paused, his chin nearly slipping to his chest for a second. He started to straighten off Bucky's shoulder when he blinked awake.

'You're a person,' Bucky said, trying to encourage Steve onto his shoulder without really pressuring him. 'You can sleep.'

'Sleep,' Steve whispered. He settled back down, his cheek on Bucky's shoulder. He butted his hand up against Bucky's knee; Bucky took it like he would have when he didn't doubt if Steve were present in his own head. He shot his guilty eyes up to the rearview mirror, to see if Sam were looking to catch Bucky in this act, whatever it was, with whomever he had beside him. Sam was driving, focused, and Bucky snuck a breath from the top of Steve's head, breathing him in like it could keep them safe. 'Weapons don't—' Steve tried. His head dipped, exhaustion and the warmth of the backseat finally overcoming what of the programming was there.

'You're allowed to sleep,' Bucky repeated. Steve's head stayed heavy. His breath shifted, coming now in tired, quiet huffs.

'Tired,' Steve murmured again, voice going almost too soft to hear over the sound of the road under the tires. 'The system requires maintenance—'

'Sleep,' Bucky urged, interrupting. Steve settled further, leaning wholly into Bucky. 'You'll feel better when you're rested. I'll keep you safe.'

'Safe,' Steve repeated, echoing sleepily as he finally gave in to the exhaustion maintenance and resistance drilled into him. 'Bucky,' he sighed, almost unintentionally.

When Bucky braved a look to the rearview mirror again, Sam met his motion. Steve shifted restlessly. Sam looked back at Bucky in silence before turning back to the road. They drove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is nearly done! Thanks to all my readers! Don't forget to comment or kudos! The next section will be up as soon as I can get it done!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Avengers get ready to go after Rumlow in Siberia, Bucky and Steve get ready to seek asylum in Wakanda.

  
'Stevie,' someone whispered, stroking their palm over the short, bristly hair covering a skull. It felt nice, and the asset thought maybe it was his skull. It twisted into the touch where it lay. It sighed, its breath dry and easy. It was not frozen; it was warm where it lay against something warm, dense but soft. It was impossibly warm and the hand felt soft and nice. 'Wake up for me, sweetheart.'  
  
'Should we say things like _wake up for me_ , to him now?' someone wondered, further than the first voice. The asset ignored the question because it had been allowed to curl its arms around its neck as it dozed against someone's lap; the asset felt so warm and tired. It wanted to drift back into that safe nothingness of sleep.  
  
'Oh, fuck, I don't know—I'm sure I've said it before,' the first man said. 'I can't worry like that.'  
  
'Sweetheart,' the voice said again, hailing, and somehow the asset knew it was the thing hailed with such a gentle name. The asset opened its eyes. There was someone familiar there, with their hand on his head, with kind, light eyes and a worried moue. The asset was lying with its head on their lap. The asset was warm and comfortable and safe, it realised. It realised it was waking up, from sleep: impossible. The asset should only wake freezing from cryostorage; how could it wake up here?  
  
If it was waking warm and comfortable and breathing on its own, not freezing or dripping and without burning eyes, without medicated air or that mask, it was because the asset had been asleep, asleep on its own. The asset was not permitted to sleep. The thought made it gasp and surge upright.  
  
'Whoa, easy,' someone said, landing a hand on the asset's chest when it sat so quick it almost pitched itself over. The handler caught him before he could tumble face first into the footwell of a car. The car smelled of leather and a little like cigarettes, and a little stale from the asset's sleeping, huffing breaths. Its arm was too light; it was far lighter than the asset had thought. It had tried to compensate for a weight that wasn't there and had nearly thrown itself to the ground. 'Easy, hey,' the voice said.  
  
The asset lifted its hand, confused why it was so light. The arm wasn't strong; it was soft and tactile and confusing and weak. The person in front of the asset said something else, but the asset couldn't hear him; it was confused by the lack of this new arm's weight, the brush of its own clothes it could feel against the soft surface. It didn't know where it was. Its face was flushed hot, striking panic into a brain that was meant to be a machine, precise.  
  
'System maintenance is required,' the asset reported, because that must be what was wrong. Might it not be—be finished? Was the asset still being built? It remembered missions; it remembered being used. Finished tools were used. It knew it shouldn't be able to recall, but it could. It remembered spicy food and handholding and screams. Its hair was short like someone had freshly cut into his brain. The asset remembered ducking behind long hair; the asset remembered that no one cut into him anymore. He wouldn't have been cut open in a car; they needed to strap him down if they were going to cut him. Why wasn't he strapped down? The asset was confused.  
  
The asset became aware.   
  
It was in a small room unlike the car, or the quinjet, just now. There was a plexiglass porthole behind him and an opaque, locking door five feet away. It was a private cabin, with a little double bed that the asset had sat on when Sam had told him goodbye here—when? Some time ago, but the asset wasn't meant to function that way. It wasn't meant to know Sam, gentle Sam, who the asset remembered but couldn't picture. The asset wasn't supposed to wonder either, but it wondered how it ended up in this small cabin, with portholes looking over a Tarmac and another quinjet, taking off and banking north. It had been on that plane moments ago, with people the asset could picture but not name. A woman with red hair was going to stop the man with the scars, but she had to be fast and she was gone now. The asset had been in a basement before, where it had been recalibrated.  
  
It should have nothing but the programme. Somehow it had lots of other things rattling around in its head. It felt like time wasn't right, like it was somewhere else even if he saw this in front of him now.  
  
It was on an aeroplane; the asset also realised it both wasn't alone and wasn't afraid. It looked at the back of the person who sat near it, who had dark hair and pale skin and who breathed in a strangely familiar way: measured, trying to stay calm. It didn't make sense that something so intimate could be familiar. Weapons did not have memories. Weapons had nothing that could be intimate, no one to be intimate with.  
  
The asset shouldn't be able to remember, but he knew who the handler was; he recognised Bucky. The asset knew Bucky by name, even; the asset knew Bucky's favourite kind of bread, knew which side of the bed he liked better. It didn't make sense.  
  
Bucky sat on the edge of the bed instead of lounging back to be near the asset where he sat aimlessly in the middle. He'd sit nearer to the asset, at home, if home existed. Every line of Bucky's body held him away from the asset. Bucky was afraid and the asset could tell by the tense set of his shoulders. It knew, even if it shouldn't be able to know things like that.  
  
'Do you have to recalibrate me?' the asset asked, because that would explain the handler's tense shoulders. Bucky hated the idea of wiping the asset. It would also explain why the programme seemed to be gapped and tattered in his head. Maybe the system recalibration had been interrupted, or ruined like the man with the scars had ruined him.  
  
'No,' Bucky sighed, predictably. 'No, no one is going to recalibrate you.' The asset felt a hand on its chest; its heart skipped a beat, terrified. The asset blinked and everything swam in front of it. The aeroplane fell away and the asset couldn't tell if time was real or not. Maybe he wasn't real either. He didn't have a mission. For a moment, nothing was solid and the handler's voice came thru a tunnel of water.  
  
'There's no system; you're a person.' The handler's tone was gentler than anything the asset might have heard before. It was his hand on the asset. The touch was warm, tender, not scary at all even tho the asset could hardly see where it was. The hand on his chest had caught him, kept him from falling. He'd fallen before, too. 'You're safe here; you're not in trouble for sleeping.'  
  
A second man appeared in the asset's awareness. What was wrong with it? It was supposed to be a perfectly built weapon but it could barely tell what was happening. 'Hey, buddy,' the man said.  
  
'Hi, Sam,' the asset said bizarrely. The black man grinned, like he appreciated the name. The asset wondered if _Sam_ were his name, if the asset really knew Sam, like something told it it knew the handler who'd held it. Something said the black man used to take the asset places, but black men weren't handlers. Handlers were watchful and Sam was patient and kind. 'Where am I?'  
  
'You're in the backseat of the car we drove to the airfield,' Sam said. 'Look ahead and you'll see two planes.' The asset did; he looked thru the windscreen of the car and there was a quinjet he knew and a small plane he did not. 'We came here to meet Tony. Do you know Tony?'  
  
The asset did not reply. It looked behind at the handler instead, the one it recognized; he was nervously chewing at his thumbnail, the other arm crossed over his chest like it hurt. He sat between the asset and one door; Sam blocked him in at the other. The asset didn't feel trapped by this stranger.  
  
'Who's this?' the asset asked Sam. The handler's face shifted and the asset read pain. The asset looked away; it would be punished for hurting this handler. This handler was precious. It looked at Sam, hiding from the punishment it had just earned. Sam was not a handler, so maybe the stranger behind the asset wasn't either. Maybe he was a doctor, or one of the men without roles, who watched from high windows and who were too wise to get within range of their own weapons. Maybe he was like Sam, a safe presence that the weapon should not be able to know, and yet—  
  
'That's Bucky,' Sam replied without looking away from the asset. The name meant nothing. The asset had needed to know the man wasn't a target like a sick voice in the back of its inaccessible, impossible memories insisted, demanding action, that the asset find a weapon and complete the job. 'That's your partner,' Sam went on, when the asset had merely stared, confused. It didn't clarify anything; the asset had no partner; the asset was a solitary tool to be aimed and clearly the man called Bucky could aim it. The asset wanted to orbit him, but it had made the handler's face twist up into an agonized expression, so it couldn't. It couldn't go near the handler or it would receive the punishment that had to be waiting. 'I'm your friend, Sam.'  
  
'Sam,' the asset repeated. That was a nice, simple name. The asset didn't know why but it thought it remembered Sam, in a very different way than the asset remembered the handler had once been a target. The asset thought it remembered Sam making food in the home they'd been in before, if Before existed.  
  
'Sam,' it said again, just feeling the word in his mouth; the word was real. The asset closed its eyes and leaned into the backseat and the frame of the open door. It was so tired. Its head ached but it wouldn't ache in sleep.  
  
'Oh, Steve, it's a few more minutes before you can go back to sleep,' Sam said, touching the asset's knee gently. 'I know you're tired; you'll get to sleep the whole flight, but that's ways away.'  
  
The asset opened its eyes and reeled; it was not permitted to sleep. Why did it forget that? How could it have forgotten that? It was not possible to forget; the asset had a programme that had been built to perfection. Why was it able to think like it was, wondering about names and memories while forgetting it was not permitted human functions like sleep? _Where was it?  
  
_ It looked at the back of the person who sat near it, who had dark hair and pale skin and who breathed in a strangely familiar way. It didn't make sense—but it was good, not to be wiped— _'No, no one is going to wipe'—'Holy shit, guy. You look great. Can I give you a hug?' someone asked, and the warm bravery of saying:_ yes, I trust you, hold me, hold me tight enough I can feel it _—'Hold on!'—'Wipe him, and start over,' said the handler, but the asset knew its brain was too warm; it had recognized the target from the bridge—the metal plates against its face or the snap of electricity thru every part of its body and spine; it didn't like the pain in its thoughts that demanded it ask for recalibration, that he report the fact he remembered things being taken away, again and again, the electricity in a thousand different places._ It was on an aeroplane; the asset also realised it both wasn't alone and wasn't afraid.  
  
'No, no one is going to wipe you,' the handler promised. The asset liked knowing it was safe, even if knowing that made the programme's tatters burn angrily. The handler did not look safe where he perched on the edge of a strange bed; the handler trembled like a hummingbird wing.  
  
'What are you afraid of?' the asset asked. Bucky shook his head, trying to lie and say that he wasn't afraid at all, so the asset pushed him best he could. 'You're shaking.' Bucky clenched his hands to hide it. The asset didn't know what to do.  
  
'It—Flying,' Bucky admitted. The plane had started moving slowly, the asset realised, too used to being passive to its surroundings without a mission. Their plane was going to take off too, like the one it had seen out the window. 'I know I should be focused on you—I am; it's just that I have trouble, you know, sometimes, on planes. I've been worked up; I just—it's nothing.'  
  
'I can keep you safe,' the asset offered stupidly, reaching out a hand. He knew it was stupid; the asset couldn't make anything better for anyone. Bucky made a noise like the asset could help, really, like he meant something. To the asset's surprise (he _felt_ it), Bucky turned and moved closer, leaning across the mattress and hiding his face in the asset's oversized sweater. He leaned into the asset like the asset was soft. The asset did turn soft; he cradled Bucky in his lap and soothed a hand down his side. The asset knew how to fit them together just right, so Bucky could feel safe. One of Bucky's hands folded over the asset's wrist and held tight and nervous; the asset's other arm slotted around Bucky's back without thinking. Bucky was unbelievably warm.  
  
'Oh,' the asset said, because the closeness jarred internally that something he hadn't known was inside. There really was something more than the programme. His breath caught from the warmth of Bucky against him, making him feel like a fool. He shifted his hands against Bucky's back and side and tried to think of what the other feeling under his sternum was, warm and light and yellow. His stomach dropped out as his heart skipped a beat.  
  
The asset remembered falling away from a panicked voice screaming for it, falling, falling, hitting rock, hitting ice like concrete and sinking into the water as someone tried to drag themselves out, onto the ice, out of the water; the asset remembered a person being in the river, but the asset had been alone when it fell, when they came. It was not a person, but the handler told it there was no system. The asset wondered if it were the person it remembered, falling and hitting and breaking. He wasn't in the river now, but he could feel the water moving. He didn't see the river. He saw planes and he was sitting in a car with Sam blocking the door and there was someone sitting behind him; he was penned in.  
  
'Hey, hey, it's all right,' Sam said, when the asset didn't stop panicking. 'It's all right.' The asset reached out the strange blue hand instinctively and Sam took it. The hand could feel the details of Sam's skin, the little calluses he had from writing with pens and from holding his lacrosse stick. He couldn't understand why he knew Sam played lacrosse; he couldn't understand why Sam didn't look afraid of him. Sam trusted; Sam took the asset's hand like that was no threat. 'I got you, buddy. You're OK.' The asset calmed. It wasn't falling. It leaned into the doorframe again, awake but wanting to cower and hide. Its hair didn't fall into its face. The programming must be new, if his hair was short, but the asset could only find shreds.  
  
'I wanna go home,' the asset whispered, telling Sam something impossible. It hurt, but the asset knew the word _home_ when such things shouldn't feel real. Sam just nodded like he understood. 'I was, before?'  
  
'Yeah, after Rumlow took you, you went to your home in DC, do you remember?' The asset shook its head. It didn't know Rumlow. It didn't know DC. It had never been—It didn't know where it had been, where it was from. It was not built to recall anything but the mission at hand. It did not have a mission at hand; it shouldn't even exist. It shouldn't exist, but it was holding Sam's hand tight. It didn't remember the home anymore; the asset had had an image for a second before it flickered and disappeared.  
  
'That's all right,' Sam promised him. 'You did great. We've brought you here now, so you can go somewhere safer.'  
  
'Safer than home?' the asset asked. ' _No_ , I want to go—'  
  
'I'm sorry, Steve; we have some things we need to do first,' Sam said sadly. He said it too simply; the asset realised there must be more going on than it could tell, without a mission and without the programme's first codes in its head. _Fuck_ , he used to be better than this; he would have understood why he couldn't go home before. Now, the asset just couldn't tell why not, what was happening, where it was. The asset felt its eyes sting and its face screwed up. Sam made a face too, sympathetic and so, so sorry. The asset didn't understand how it even knew what Sam might feel; the asset realised what it was feeling. It swiped at its wet face with the palm of one hand. It wondered if it were still bloody or if it had been cleaned.  
  
'I'm scared,' it confessed, like a person might. Sam nodded.  
  
'That sucks, bud,' Sam said. 'You don't need to be scared, tho; stuff is complicated, but you're not in any danger here. I'm here, and Bucky's here, see?' The asset turned; it expected to see the handler from before, and instead, suddenly, was Bucky. The asset felt his eyes go wide.  
  
'Bucky,' he gasped, ripping his hand away from Sam and reaching both towards Bucky instead. 'Bucky!' He tugged at Bucky's forearms, surprising himself with how desperately he wanted to know Bucky was real. He tugged hard enough to shift Bucky closer; their knees bumped.  
  
'Yeah, sweetheart, it's me,' Bucky promised.  
  
'Bucky, Bucky,' he babbled, almost without meaning to. He readjusted his grip, assuring himself somehow of Bucky's presence. One of his hands landed on Bucky's forearm, gripping his sleeve. ' _Buck_.'  
  
'Hiya, Stevie,' Bucky said, clutching Steve right back. 'I'm here.' He brought one of Steve’s hands to his mouth to kiss. Steve took the opportunity to cup his hand against Bucky's face, feeling how strong his best girl's jaw was, how soft Buck's smile was in contrast. Steve realised as his heart lit up with the touch what Sam had meant when he said _partner_ : this person was more than the asset and as much as Steve; this person was worth dying and living for.  
  
'Bucky,' Steve breathed. He wished he could say all he felt. He wished he could understand all he felt; he was just realising he was a person. He had a past and a future and most of it was wrapped up with this person in front of him. He gripped Bucky's hand and hoped it was enough. Bucky's face didn't look pained anymore, but the asset couldn't read it. He wished he understood.  
  
'Tony's here, too,’ Sam said, ‘in the quinjet with Nat.'  
  
'Do you remember Tony?' Sam asked wisely, while the programme was distracted trying to contain the joy of recognizing Bucky. The asset felt the pain trying to compel him to silence, but he could focus on the feelings he had for Bucky instead. He held Bucky tightly and dug the name _Tony_ out of his mind.  
  
'Yes,' the asset said. 'Howard's son.'  
  
He remembered Tony _—_ he was almost sure of it _—_ but his mind only pulled up images of his friend, Howard: a dark-haired and dark-eyed man with cool skin, peering down at the asset from the window in the door of a cryotube, nodding to someone to open it. He remembered Howard watching and giving orders as men in white coats struggled to restrain the beginnings of the asset, even one-armed and insane and starved; they struggled to drag him from the isolation box and pin him to a metal, grated table _—_ Howard standing behind someone who shot tranquilizers into his struggling flesh, and eventually, Howard growing accustomed enough to it all to give the dose himself. He remembered tossing his cards on a table covered in non-rationed foods and rationed cigarettes and feeling furious and childish as he lost another round of poker to a cackling Howard; he remembered Bucky's knee pressed against his under the meeting table as Howard and Peggy argued about supply lines. He remembered his eyes sliding over a handler who carried a scalpel and wore Howard's face; the asset was strapped down and feeling nothing at all _—  
  
__'He's been out of cryofreeze too long,' the scientist protested, voice changing its echo as he followed the handler out of the disused vault—because the asset might be a person after all, might have had a mother, and a friend, a lover—the asset might be a person—might have been loved—he might—  
  
__‘Excuse me?’ Steve said, confused.  
  
__‘Doctor Abraham Erskine,’ he said, reaching out a hand. Steve stood, aware how short he was even compared to this doctor. ‘I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve.’ They shook hands.  
  
__'Steve Rogers,’ he offered—  
  
__'Then wipe him,' the handler said, and at least this flood of recollective agony would be taken by reconditioning, even if that was a torture—'Are we only torturing him?' asked a young nurse, in Russian, which was starting to piece together. 'Weapons cannot be tortured,' a voice replied, assured. 'Only fixed.' The mask affixed to his face flooded and his scalp was again pulled away as the world faded—in and of itself. The asset shivered despite the biology which disallowed such discomfort as cold. The asset felt cold. The asset felt.  
  
__'What is it?'_ Bucky whispered, voice too small from fear and the way he'd folded in on himself and his big chest. The asset looked down. Steve looked down at the contrast of his hand against Bucky's dark hair. He was warm; he had Bucky's practical furnace of a body tucked against his torso, tucked into his lap. The asset was on a plane, warmed by the shaking person against him.  
  
The asset brushed his own palm over Bucky's cheek, over the curl of hair about the shell of his ear. He held Bucky close and Bucky let him; Bucky was less afraid, less afraid with the asset at his side. It shouldn't be possible, but then Bucky came close and jarred something loose and it was.  
  
The engine noise heightened. Bucky clutched him a little desperately; Steve held him as softly as he knew how. He remembered Bucky was afraid of flying. Bucky had fallen once too. Bucky had fallen, and he was here anyway. Steve was _warm_ and Bucky was here.   
  
'I knew you'd come,' he whispered, because there had been a time when that was all he knew: that someone important would come and take him away from the place where life meant nothing and pain was matter of course and death was cheap, and now this person was _here,_ and the asset was holding him. The asset was holding this person, this other person who had been on their way, who'd been coming all along; he couldn't believe it had finally happened. He was finally free. He tried and failed to say it louder: 'I knew you'd come for me.'  
  
'You found me,' Bucky corrected, murmuring into Steve's shirt, but before the asset could make him explain, the plane began to lift off in earnest. 'Fuck, I _hate_ this.' Bucky gasped as the plane shook and hurtled and started to lift. The asset tried to soothe a hand over Bucky, tried to push the nervous, frightened energy away somehow. He shushed him gently.  
  
'It's OK,' he said uselessly. 'I got you.'  
  
'There are words you usually say,' Steve asked without asking, as he stroked his palm over Bucky's soft, soft hair again. _Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu, he began, thinking of his mother, and the way she’d led him thru the prayer twice a day when she was healthy, when he’d done it when she wasn’t.  
  
__'Increase the radiation,' Zola ordered, repeating himself in German. A machine kicked back into life and Steve felt his lips crack with dryness as his mouth fell open, slack.  
  
__He lost his grip on the prayer._ 'I don't remember them,' Steve said, pushing away the pain.  
  
'I'm sorry. I don't remember; I'm so sorry.' Steve wished he could remember better or more. He whispered that he was trying. The incline began to ease, and the asset felt the force of acceleration shift and fade as the plane levelled. The porthole showed clouds; the asset reached out and pushed a soft and dark curtain across it. He didn't know why, but he did. It seemed to cue the lights of the room, dimming to just a bare, standby glow of safety stripping along the wall to the door. Eventually, the asset could barely tell they were flying at all; the flight was smooth now that they were above the clouds. The asset realized its hand was still stroking thru and over Bucky's hair, absent and kind. The asset hadn't known it could work that way; it was designed as a weapon, not anything absently kind.   
  
'You don't have to remember them for me, my prayers,' Bucky said, when the air had drained of his sour fear. 'Especially not now. You don't have to do anything; I'm here no matter what, OK? I'm here as long as you want me.'  
  
'I want things,' the asset said. He could tell that at least. 'I like it here,' the asset added, risking it. If the handlers knew he liked something, they'd know they could use it to torture him. Bucky shifted, tilting his head to look up at him.  
  
'Yeah?' Bucky asked.  
  
'It's warm and it's with you,' he told Bucky. Bucky gave a sweet, slow smile. But he shifted away, off of Steve's lap. Steve laid down, too, because it seemed like an invitation. 'I'm safe.' He tucked himself as close to Bucky on the mattress as he dared. He couldn't quite bridge the gap between them. He had been gentle, but he was still a weapon. He couldn't be trusted, especially not now.  
  
He couldn't remember what had happened to make him think _especially not now_.  
  
He knew what was going to happen, even if he didn't know how it had become possible. The man with the scars was going to wake them up, the other Winter Soldiers, the crazed survivors of torture like his. 'What's going to happen to them? To the others,' Steve clarified, when Bucky's frown asked for more. 'The ones like me.'  
  
'I don't know,' Buck admitted. He didn't sound pleased; he didn't quite avoid Steve's staring.  
  
'The serum changes a person, fundamentally,' Bucky said, after visibly struggling to find his words. 'Drastically. I don't know if they'll—I don't know how rational HYDRA's procedure leaves a person; the Red Skull went insane, but you didn't. I didn't. I don't know if they'll submit to deprogramming or if—Maybe it was all voluntary, for them, you know? Notebook has instructions for everyone's cryotubes and defrost needs, but only your programming. I just don't know.'  
  
The asset didn't reply. It didn't understand how a procedure could be fundamentally radical. Weapons did not have foundations. It barely understood that it existed, let alone that it—that _he_ as a self could change.  
  
He was a person, he reminded himself. Personhood seemed impossible to even imagine, much less to navigate. The asset wasn't built to decide. It didn't know how to exist as a person, let alone be fundamentally changed.   
  
'What's going to happen to _me_?' he wondered. What would system maintenance do if the weapon was a person? How could the programme stay if thoughts could poke holes in it? Would he stop existing when the programme fell apart, like when the mission was over? Would he fade away? Would he leave Bucky all alone? Abandoned?  
  
'I don't know,' the handler said; _Bucky_ said; Steve's partner said. 'T'Challa's given you asylum—given us asylum, I guess, and we'll see what happens. Maybe we don't end up with a choice; maybe we do.'  
  
'But I know you,' Steve insisted. 'I want to stay,' he added, thinking of what it would be to stop existing here with Bucky. It was so nice, here with Bucky, where all the things he didn't know were held in the air by someone else. It would be terrible to lose this, this person who knew who the asset had been before he was built.  
  
'Yeah?' Bucky asked, like he'd been encouraged. 'You know me?' he prompted. The asset tried to resist; it was not meant to know people. 'You know me?' Steve felt compelled to tell the truth. He nodded, but he felt lost. He didn't know where he was, but he knew he'd been questioning the programme and the handlers would come to stop that; they always came.  
  
_But they came when I was alone_ , Steve remembered. He remembered soldiers dragged him thru the snow; he watched what was left of his arm disappear behind him, left behind in the red snow like it wasn't his anymore. He remembered trying to fight but being numb and dizzy and frozen. He remembered them coming when he was alone. Suddenly, he and Bucky were alone. Steve held him on a bed that wasn't at home, that was somewhere else. Steve looked around. There was a little curtain across a roundish window; there was a thin, locking door a few feet from the bed, behind Bucky's back. The asset laid between the wall and Bucky's thick, warm chest.  
  
'This is an aeroplane,' Bucky told him, like he knew the asset was confused. The asset bobbed another nod. He knew what aeroplanes were. They didn't usually have little bedrooms; the plane must belong to someone as important as the sheets were soft.   
  
'My friend, T'Challa, is taking us to his home until we find out what's gonna happen,' Bucky reminded him. 'You'll be safe there.' Safety couldn't exist for the asset. It was impossible and the programme rejected it. His hands went numb. He felt himself dissolving with the pins and needles.  
  
The asset became aware of Sam's voice in his ear and his shoulders vibrating with some kind of fear he couldn't name. The asset was standing, in a different plane, with Sam, with Nat at his other elbow, with someone who looked not quite familiar seated in a pilot's chair nearby. His dark eyes looked worried; his face was bruised in sick greens and blues. One of his thumbs had a blue foam-thin aluminium brace with white straps.  
  
The asset knew this man. The asset didn't know if he was a handler or not. The asset hadn't seen him in—he didn't know how long. He didn't know what it was he didn't remember that gave him pause, with acid in his stomach. He didn't know what was wrong. He felt safe with Sam and he felt safe with the red-haired person. He wanted to feel safe with this other man but he had acid in his stomach and he didn’t know enough to know why. He knew he was always safe with Sam, but he felt something nonetheless. He felt nervous.   
  
'Do you remember Tony?' Sam asked. Steve looked at him. The asset realized who the seated man was, the familiar face: Tony was Howard's son. He owned a lab and the asset had been opened and had suffered there; it couldn't remember if it had sat for the surgery willingly or if it had been restrained. It remembered pain medication wearing off and this man plying him with more, desperate and sorry. That didn't make sense, for a handler to be gentle like that.  
  
Handlers did not alleviate suffering; weapons did not exist to feel or suffer. _'Weapons cannot be tortured,' a doctor told a nurse; 'Only fixed. Order is pain; we'll get him in order.'_ This man—but not quite—had stopped the asset crying once, slipping drugs into his veins and disappearing him; this man—but not quite—had been a friend and a handler and a target and—This man but not quite had seen the asset suffer and had given another injection to quell the grinding pain anew (but maybe it wasn't this, wasn't real, what he remembered?).  
  
Tony was Howard's son. Tony was supposed to have been Steve's friend; he couldn't remember where his doubt came from and he couldn't help but wonder if Tony might be able to say words to make him gone. He couldn't _remember_ why he doubted they were really friends and that terrified him. He wondered why he thought maybe they hadn't been friends after all. He didn't want to suffer under a friend again. He didn't want to be forced to kill Howard. He wondered if he should warn someone.  
  
'System maintenance is required,' he said, the only thing he could try.  
  
Wondering hurt. The asset didn't understand where it was.  
  
'Here; sit down,' Sam said. 'You're still shaky. You should have let us feed you.' The asset sat in one of the flight chairs along the fuselage. He reached back out for Sam—he reached his own hand, because the other one was supposed to be bullet proof and sharp but it wasn't; it was soft and—and Sam took his hand. Sam felt familiar, like a comfort. The asset wanted to lean into him and sleep until its head's aching had stopped. 'You OK?'  
  
'I'm scared,' Steve admitted, so quietly he wondered if Sam heard him. Sam settled into a seat next to him. Steve shifted his grip on Sam's hand when he sat, tucking his wrist under Sam's where it rested on Steve's knee. Tony moved closer too, to a chair across the aisle from the asset. The asset tracked him without looking up, following his fine leather shoes along the floor of the jet. 'Where's Bucky?' he whispered.  
  
'You asked him to stay outside while we talked about what happened with Rumlow,' Sam said. 'Do you want me to get him?' Steve shook his head _no_.  
  
Bucky didn't need to hear what might come out when Steve was asked what Rumlow planned, had done, had done to him. It was best for Bucky to stay outside. He would be up for months with nightmares as it was; Steve knew it must have been awful for Bucky to see Steve not recognise him. Steve couldn't picture his face now, couldn't put the image of Bucky in his head. He knew who Bucky was, tho; he knew he had to do what little he could to protect his best girl. Besides, Sam was here now; it was over. Sam would look out for him, keep him safe when he was lost. Bucky didn't need to know what happened when Rumlow had the asset held with magnets at his mercy.  
  
'Steve?' someone said, hailing him softly.  
  
'Yeah,' he said, blinking. He blinked and then saw Natasha frowning at him, concerned. He wondered if he'd drifted away, if she'd said his name more than once. 'I'm Steve.'  
  
'Can you answer some questions for us?' Nat asked. The asset nodded.  
  
'Yeah, but I'm lost,' he said.  
  
'You're lost?' she said.  
  
He remembered hitting people, even hitting Natasha, tossing someone over his hip and into a lobby table, and he'd promised himself he'd never have to do that again: use his strength as violence. He realised Nat had wicked bruising. It had to have been done by him. The realization made his eyes sting. 'What happened—What did I do?' he asked, because he knew something had gone wrong.  
  
'You're asking us?' Tony snapped. The asset dropped its eyes to the floor; it wasn't allowed to brace for punishment and it was better if the asset didn't see it coming. 'We were sort of hoping you could fill us in, Shortstop; it's been over a week since anyone's seen you.' The asset didn't understand why that felt like a blow. Was he Shortstop? The asset drew in a shaky breath. It tried to think. It tried to think.  
  
'I don't know,' he managed. Its throat felt tight.  
  
'People have died,' Tony said, a little harshly. The asset swallowed a flinch, trying to conceal its fear lest it be found out. 'Rumlow did all this just to get to you, so I need you to do a little better than "I don't know".'

'Hey,' Sam said from beside him, reproachful, and the asset thought the reproach was directed at it until the hand Sam landed on his back was gentle, soft, something the asset had felt a hundred times before. 'Come on.'  
  
It felt Sam's hand on its shoulder blade, thumb moving slightly enough to be felt without overwhelming. The asset realized Sam was reproaching the handler. _Fuck_ , it just didn't _understand_ what was happening. It couldn't think and it couldn't ask _why not_ and it could barely breathe past the blinding pain of trying to do those things. It usually had something to help it breathe, but it couldn't ask for anything but system maintenance; the programme was above all else and it was in shreds. It checked its hand, the one not hiding under Sam's; it wasn't covered in blood from the people who were dead, whom the asset had failed. It couldn't remember washing up. Their blood was just gone and he didn't even remember it, any of it, not how it got there or where it went.  
  
But Sam had gone with Tony, with Nat, with Clint. Sam wasn't here. He looked around. He was on a different plane, with Bucky, flying somewhere. Sam was _gone_. Where was Steve going? Where was he? Was he alone? The handlers always came when he was alone.   
  
'The handlers—they'll come for me,' he tried, tried to warn Bucky.  
  
'No,' Bucky said simply. 'I won't let that happen again. Not again. The Avengers will stop Rumlow, and T'Challa will keep us safe until we figure this all out, OK?'  
  
'OK,' Steve said. He agreed. He trusted Bucky. He trusted Bucky's friends. He didn't trust himself, but Bucky would make sure he didn't hurt anyone. Bucky would make sure no one hurt him. The handlers might come, but Bucky would help. They'd come before, after all, but now the asset was Steve and Steve could think. Whatever the handlers did wouldn't last; Steve was alive and he thought he might be real.  
  
'Who am I?' Bucky asked, something curious in his eyes. Steve shook his head slightly, nervous. He didn't know how to explain it. The programme didn't have any words for relationships or people. The asset's programme screamed: _specifics or nothing_. 'Who am I to you?'  
  
'I don't know,' the asset lied.  
  
'Yes, you do,' Bucky urged. 'You know something. I'm at least something.'  
  
'You're everything,' the asset whispered, reporting, unspecific but true. Vagueness scraped like a blade dragged perpendicular to the bone, along his spine, sharp and nettled. It made him jerk as if he could escape the sting.  
  
'You all right?' Bucky asked. Steve nodded; the programme demanded the asset report system dysfunction, but he didn't want to. He didn't want to report anything, but that didn't help the pain recede. He looked down, staring vaguely at Bucky's chest, at the rise and fall that promised that he at least was real.   
  
'I know you; we were—' he stumbled, trying to be specific. If he was specific, he could remember; someone had learned that once and had taught the asset so it could become a person again. It was hard to try to remember, to hold onto any old details. The asset had the impression it shouldn't be hard; the asset thought perhaps the programme made it hard. It should be easy to say anything to the person in front of him; this person was everything.  
  
' _We_ have books,' the asset tried to explain. He couldn't make his eyes look up. The weapon's eyes wouldn't recognize him as an authority over the programme; the weapon wouldn't look up without orders. Looking down had been like nothing and now he was stuck.   
  
'We do have books,' Bucky laughed. Steve wondered if he'd been understood. He tried to look up again; his head moved but his eyes went fuzzy like colour and shadow and light meant nothing. The asset could see, but Steve couldn't. He just didn't _understand_.  
  
'I don't know,' Steve told the blur as the asset tried to report its need for system recalibration. 'I think I'm missing things. I think there should be more in my head than this. I should know more than I do; I should remember you more.' He should remember other things too. He reached out blindly, afraid. Bucky settled a hand under Steve's; he let Steve hold him in the space between their bodies.  
  
He let Steve hold him as if the asset weren't scary at all.   
  
If Steve were a person, he had to have a mother, but he didn't know a thing about her: if she'd looked like him or if she had been strong, if she'd loved him or not. He didn't know who her mother had been. Steve didn't know anything except that he owned books somewhere, that Bucky felt like he fit next to Steve, that his head was filled with empty spaces, sharp edges of the programme, and vague memories. The programme should not allow memories.  
  
'I should remember people, but I don't. Um. Sam?' he guessed. He tried to pull back up the image of someone guiding him thru a crowd and assuring him when panic grew in the bones like this. He thought maybe Sam was black; he had an image of someone's hand contrasting sharply with his own when he reached out, scared; the hand he held was a comfort and he couldn't trust his memory to tell him if the contrast he remembered was in colour or character. Maybe Sam was simply a bright light of bravery and comfort, yellow and soft and bright and warm; maybe he existed as a nebulous thing, like the asset, but as a better thing than a weapon.  
  
'Yeah,' Bucky said dimly. 'Yeah, you know Sam.' Steve should have known others too.  
  
'Where did they go?' Steve asked, because he and Bucky were alone now, and his head was empty too. He was supposed to know what Rumlow's plan was. He had to make sure it stopped; waking up those insane, murderous creatures would wake up chaos and unleash it like the horrors of Pandora's box. 'Am I gonna remember? What about Rumlow?'  
  
'They're stopping Rumlow. They'll come back. I don't know if you'll remember them when they do,' Bucky admitted. Steve's face fell. 'I hope you'll remember me,' Bucky amended, uselessly.  
  
'But you know what I don't,' Steve tried. He searched Bucky's face but he only found uncertainty. 'You know what's gonna happen to me, don't you?'  
  
'I know some things,' Bucky agreed. 'No one knows everything. I don't know what's gonna happen, no.' Steve nodded, even if that answer were deeply unsatisfying. 'I'm scared too,' Bucky admitted after a long silence.  
  
'Oh,' Steve said. Bucky must not be a handler. Handlers knew everything or at least needed to control the asset enough that they knew everything it could think or feel or do. Bucky didn't know what was going to happen to him; Bucky couldn't promise that the soft, warm moments missing from his head or the jagged holes in his memory would mend.  
  
'I'm so sorry,' Bucky whispered. Steve blinked and stared at Bucky's face, the image suddenly clear to him. Bucky lay facing him, but he was staring into the air between them, avoiding Steve's face. His voice sounded strange. It squeezed something in the asset's chest.  
  
'Why?' Steve said.  
  
'I let this happen to you,' Bucky managed. His voice cracked. 'God damn it, _Stevie_. I let them take you and I let them—' He mashed a hand over his face and tried to turn away, to roll onto his back and hide from the asset.  
  
'No,' Steve said. Steve shifted closer, his knees bumping Bucky's and his hands coming up to touch him, to cover each of his cheeks. 'No, no, hey,' he said. His very bones disagreed with this callous sentiment; he knew with conviction that Bucky always tried to do what was best for Steve. He knew it like he knew winter was cold and the night was dark, the sun bright, clouds dim. 'No, I remember you. You tried to help.'  
  
'Fuck,' Bucky sobbed, even as he let Steve tug him back towards him. One of his hands landed on Steve's shoulder; the other curled between them. 'No, I was right there—I was _right_ _there_ when he took you and I _knew_ I should've called it; I should've protected you. I should've protected you, Steve; I should've _protected—'_  
  
'No, don't cry,' Steve begged. He leaned in, kissing Bucky's closed eyes and almost-frantically wiping his tears for him. His plastic hand didn't absorb or swipe the moisture quite like his flesh hand. He expressed his confusion at that in instinctive words he himself couldn't quite hear. They made Bucky let out a wet laugh, short but sincere. 'Don't cry. I remember you. I was scared and you were soft.'  
  
'I should've—' Bucky protested, trying to reclaim the burden of guilt. 'I should have listened to you—'  
  
'No, don't cry,' the asset begged.  
  
'I'm so sorry,' Bucky sobbed. 'I should have been better. I should have protected you.'  
  
'They stole me,' the asset asserted; it didn't know what it meant. 'They took me, not you. I remember you. You help me. You helped me.' The handler shook his head. He looked so scared.  
  
'Jesus, Steve, I let you get caught,' the handler insisted. 'I let you die—you died and I just went on living—and after you dragged yourself out, I let them ambush you again—'  
  
'No, you helped me,' the asset said, and he didn't understand why, but he pressed his lips to the tear tracks. 'You helped me,' he whispered, of a thousand things that he could _almost_ remember. He could taste Bucky's tears. He didn't understand the burst of warmth that gave him but it inspired him to kiss Bucky's cheek again and again, and then his jaw, and then his lips. For a perfect second, lips kissed back.  
  
'Who are you?' Steve sighed when Bucky pulled back. That wasn't what he meant but he didn't have any better words. He wanted to know what he felt in his chest.  
  
'I'm Bucky,' the voice said, and even tho the asset had known that, the sound made something foreign slot into place. He gasped. The voice tried to move away and Steve grabbed him. Steve was— _He_ was Steve. Steve was aware. Sam had told him Bucky was his partner, but _oh, this is who he meant_. Bucky was springtime without pollen and rainy mornings without aching joints. He was like a painless burr, a constant softness tangled irrevocably. He had been the one to break a human's heart and put it back together a million times; he had loved a human once and more than that: the asset had been that person in those memories. Bucky was _his_.  
  
'Bucky?' Steve asked. His eyes flew open. Bucky was looking back at him. His face was open and sweet, still pale from whatever had scared him just now and looking concerned for Steve.  
  
'Yeah?' he replied, but Steve felt breathless; he felt his hands clutch desperately, confused and certain that Bucky was what he needed. He was Steve. He felt something wake up. He wondered if he was waking up.  
  
'Bucky?' he said again, unable to believe it. Bucky was here; Bucky had come for him.  
  
'I'm Bucky,' he replied simply. He didn't understand the magnitude of that confirmation, Steve could tell.   
  
'You're here,' Steve realised. 'It's you,' he added, tangling his hand in Bucky's hair. Bucky's expression shifted, warming soft and fond and relieved and Steve soaked it in like sunshine. 'It's you. Oh, my God, _Bucky_.'  
  
Just like that, he could breathe. He could exist. He wasn't a weapon at all; he was a person; this shattering pain in his head would cease. He would get to think again, and he'd be able to decide what to do by himself. The programme would fade; he had existed without it once and he would again. The pain would stop and he didn't need to be frozen for that to happen. He'd get to look around and _understand_ again; he was going to be OK.   
  
'It's me,' Steve told Bucky urgently, trying to explain that he knew he was someone, a person. He couldn't get his own words out, but God, he wasn't an asset, a thing, chattel. He was a person and Bucky had found him.   
  
'You're Steve,' Bucky agreed. Steve wanted to laugh with joy but he was too frantic with relief.  
  
'They wiped me,' Steve said. 'Right?'  
  
'Yeah.' Bucky agreed like it hurt him to say it out loud. 'Do you remember me?' Bucky asked, but Steve babbled, too relieved by the assurance that the vast empty stretches in his mind weren't the result of his mechanism. He was a human and he'd been tortured. He didn't say it to Bucky—it was barbaric to be _relieved_ at the idea he'd been tortured, not made, but relieved he was. He was relieved he'd been tortured; it meant he was a person, not a thing, but a person. He didn't even hear the question.  
  
'I was wiped!' he said again. 'That's all. I'm real; they must've wiped me.' He was holding Bucky too tightly. He let go, but then he found himself clutching back. God, he was so relieved that Bucky was here. 'I'm— _I'm_ a person.' He didn't want to let go. He moved closer, closing the space between them. He pressed his forehead into Bucky's cervical rib. He practically sobbed into Bucky's neck with relief. Fuck, Bucky smelled familiar, and the asset knew enough to trust that familiarity even as a hot scalding in his head told him it was impossible. He breathed Bucky in and sobbed from the beauty of something familiar and from the pain of letting his mind feel it.   
  
'You're real, Steve,' Bucky promised. He cradled the back of the asset's skull and kissed Steve's temple, an immeasurable comfort. The hand on his skull didn't scare him at all, not even when it was chased by the phantom sensation of Rumlow's hand tugging at hair Steve had since cut off, the sensation almost stronger than the feel of Bucky's warmth against him. It didn't matter; Steve was relieved to be home, or at least with Buck. Steve would tell Bucky was relieved too; he must have been afraid Steve would never remember him, like Steve was afraid he would stop existing when the programme was shut into ice. 'You're a person.'  
  
'I'm real,' Steve gasped. 'I'm _real_ and you're here. Fuck, Bucky, I remember you; I _really_ do.' He pulled away from Bucky's neck; he leaned up and _kissed_ Bucky. He really understood what it meant to do it. He didn't even know where he was, but he kissed Bucky, soaking in his humanity. Bucky held him back, cupping his face bravely and tenderly and warmer than anything the asset might have ever known. Steve knew it well.  
  
'I'm so happy you're back,' Bucky whispered.  
  
Steve fished his leaky mind for what he felt in response to that. 'Together,' he tried. He didn't know how to explain how he felt; the asset had had no need for words like these. It wasn't the right phrase; it wasn't what he meant, even if he knew they'd been apart—what had happened? why were they running from it? why was Bucky here in this place that wasn't home?—but he managed: 'Birds.' They flocked together, he and Bucky; no matter what, they could rely on each other.  
  
He felt so relieved when Bucky laughed quietly, brushing his hand over Steve's short hair. Steve wondered if someone had cut into his brain recently, but it didn't matter, not if Bucky were here. He had always known someone would come.  
  
'That's right,' Bucky promised. ''Till the end of the line.'  
  
^^^  
  
Bucky almost started when Sam opened the car door. Bucky looked over Steve's sleeping form, his head tucked into Bucky's lap and his feet kicked up against the door Sam just tugged open. The slight movement against his feet threatened to wake Steve, and Bucky found himself soothing him before he could help it.  
  
'They need him,' Sam said gently. Bucky wanted to bristle at the kid gloves, protest that he was a man and he didn't need to be handled so gently, but he had to appreciate it. He felt stretched thin over wire. He appreciated Sam trying to soothe this chaotic and painful situation, even tho he too had to be worried sick and exhausted too. 'They've chosen a couple of places Nat thinks might have been training centres for soldiers like Steve, but—I mean, she's choosing these places from what she had thought were ghost stories about the Winter Soldier. It's not real info. We need _him_.'  
  
'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. There was no more delaying it. Bucky should have been brave enough to wake Steve the moment they arrived in the hangar and Sam parked in eyeshot of the quinjet. He shouldn't have sent Sam and Nat ahead to debrief Tony and T'Challa; he should have woken Steve right away. Bucky steeled himself and stopped chickening out.  
  
'Stevie,' Bucky said. He brushed over Steve's short hair and Steve shifted with his hand. Bucky imagined Steve was chasing the soft touch. 'Wake up for me, sweetheart.'  
  
'Should we say things like _wake up for me_ , to him now?' Sam asked where he stood outside the open back door. Bucky's sternum cracked under his skin.  
  
'Fuck,' Bucky said. 'I don't know—I'm sure I've said it before.' Bucky wondered how many times he'd come so close to triggering Steve, waking him up with the simple phrase Rumlow had snuck into him. Bucky should have found it; he should have done better. 'I can't worry like that,' he said, even if he already was and couldn't imagine he'd stop. He brushed his hand over Steve's hair again. 'Sweetheart.'  
  
Steve opened his eyes. Bucky gave him a smile and tried to keep all his worry hidden; God, it was a relief to have Steve awake in his lap, even in a hangar where they were hiding from their own Secretary of State. Bucky was so happy Steve wasn't fucking dead; Bucky remembered how hard it had been when he had woken up day after day in a world where Steve was dead. Before he could say anything else, something panicked Steve. Panic drove him up before Bucky could soothe him and he overbalanced; Steve almost tumbled into the footwell. Bucky caught him.  
  
'Whoa, easy! Easy, hey,' Bucky said. Steve didn't even seem to notice him, not even with Bucky’s hand across his narrow chest. He stared at his prosthetic like it was alien, flexing his fingers as if testing his own control over them. Bucky's heart ached. Bucky wondered if Steve had expected the metal that used to rip the sheets in his sleep or if he had thought his own arm might be in place. Steve's jaw worked nervously. ‘Darling? Can you hear me?’  
  
'System maintenance is required,' the asset reported. A cold shiver of nostalgic fear scraped down Bucky's spine.  
  
'There's no system; you're a person,' Bucky promised. 'You're safe here; you're not in trouble for sleeping.' Steve's breath wheezed a little as he turned from Bucky; even if he wasn't pulling away, Bucky took his hand from Steve's chest at the sound. Steve looked at Sam, who crouched in the open door when Steve turned.  
  
'Hey, buddy,' Sam said.  
  
'Hi, Sam,' Steve said. Bucky dropped his head between his shoulders for a second, to hide how much that hurt; Steve had practically thrown himself off Bucky but knew Sam by name. 'Where am I?'  
  
'You're in the backseat of the car we drove to the airfield,' Sam said, smiling like nothing was wrong. 'Look ahead and you'll see two planes.' Steve looked out the windscreen, following Sam's passive order. Bucky gnawed his thumbnail. Steve had known Sam, but his expression was blank as could be as he took in the sight of Tony's familiar plane, T'Challa's more advanced one behind it. 'We came here to meet Tony. Do you know Tony?' Steve didn't seem to hear the question. He looked around the car like he wasn't sure what it was, and then his eyes settled on Bucky.  
  
'Who's this?' Steve asked. Bucky couldn't help the way his face crumpled. He was _Who's this?_ when Steve recognized Sam by name? Steve flinched away like Bucky's expression had scared him. Bucky's eyes stung and his throat burned; he wanted to reach out and hold Steve, make him not scared even if Bucky had been the one to scare him, but he didn't feel like he was allowed. Steve didn't even know who he was.  
  
'That's Bucky; that's your partner,' Sam explained. Bucky let the guilt pin him down and hold him together. Bucky was his partner and he'd scared Steve with the look on his face. He had to be better than that. 'I'm your friend, Sam.'  
  
'Sam,' Steve repeated. He shifted slightly, further from Bucky. 'Sam.' He leaned into the doorjam of the car.  
  
'Oh, Steve, it's a few more minutes before you can go back to sleep,' Sam said. He reached out to touch Steve with none of the hesitation Bucky felt, landing his palm on Steve's knee. 'I know you're tired; you'll get to sleep the whole flight, but that's a ways away.' Steve surged upright again, gasping. Once again, Bucky heard a whistle in the gasp and he tried to lean to see Steve's face, see if he was breathing all right, if this was just panic, or if Bucky needed to be finding the inhaler he was sure he packed.  
  
'Hey, hey, it's all right,' Sam said. 'It's all right.' Steve reached out a hand blindly and Sam took it. 'I got you, buddy. You're OK.' Steve sunk back into the doorframe, almost deflating.  
  
'I wanna go home,' Steve whispered. 'I was, before?'  
  
'Yeah, after Rumlow took you, you went to your home in DC,' Sam said. 'Do you remember?' Steve shook his head.  
  
'That's all right,' Sam said. 'You did great. We've brought you here now, so you can go somewhere safer.'  
  
'Safer than home?' the asset asked. ' _No_ , I want to go—'  
  
'I'm sorry, Steve; we have some things we need to do first.' Bucky thought he might break into pieces when that made Steve sob a little. He swiped at his face and Bucky didn't know what to do.  
  
'I'm scared,' Steve whispered. Bucky's jaw tightened almost painfully.  
  
'That sucks, bud,' Sam said. 'You don't need to be scared, tho; stuff is complicated, but you're not in any danger here. I'm here, and Bucky's here, see?' Steve turned. Bucky tried to school his features into something neutral, something comforting. He thought Steve would turn with that unreadable look he'd woken up with, but instead Steve blinked and gasped. His eyes lit up.  
  
'Bucky.' He let go of Sam. He reached out to Bucky; Bucky couldn't believe it. His face felt hot and his sternum struggled to contain his leaping heart in his chest. 'Bucky!' He tugged Bucky closer by his forearms. Bucky laughed a little, relieved that Steve knew who he was.  
  
'Yeah, sweetheart, it's me,' Bucky said. He beamed. He glanced back at Sam, but he could barely take in Sam's expression past his own delight. Sam looked glad but stressed; he rubbed his palm with a thumb.  
  
Steve stole Bucky's attention back in a second. 'Bucky, Bucky.' Steve's hands grabbed and let go and grabbed again like he wasn't sure he was allowed to hold on Bucky. ' _Buck_.'  
  
'Hiya, Stevie,' Bucky said. He shifted, gripping Steve's hands when Steve let go of his forearms. 'I'm here.' He kissed Steve's hand, like he used to when Steve was sick, like he did with Peggy when she was old. Steve cupped his face; Steve held him. Bucky couldn't believe it.  
  
'Bucky,' Steve whispered. Bucky nodded as Sam took advantage of Steve's distraction from his fear. Bucky felt that like a balm; the sight of him had calmed and elated Steve. It was OK, at least this second, that he'd failed Steve so badly; Steve held him and for the moment nothing else mattered.  
  
'Tony's here, too,' Sam said, 'in the quinjet with Nat. Do you remember Tony?'  
  
'Yes,' Steve said without looking away. Bucky leaned into his hand. He was weak; he couldn't help it. Steve stroked his cheek with a thumb, so gentle and soft that Bucky thought he might cry. 'Howard's son.'  
  
'We have to go talk to him, give him some answers, all right?' Sam said. Steve seemed to recognize this as a cue. He steeled himself, flicking his eyes between Bucky's, then he turned. He lifted his feet out of the car's footwell and let them hit the concrete flooring. 'I'll be with you. Can you stand up?'

Bucky hurried to slide across Sam's small backseat, which was designed for human-sized people. Steve stood, trying to ask for system maintenance. Sam cut him off.  
  
'I know; it's OK.' Bucky stood too, reaching out to grab Steve's elbow when he swayed.  
  
'Whoa there,' Bucky said. He gripped Steve's elbow and placed his other hand at Steve's lower back. He supported Steve for a moment until Steve could get his legs steady again, Bucky's hand delicate and protective against Steve's spine.  
  
'You see why we were trying to get you to eat before, huh?' Sam said, chastising. Bucky's relief at being recognized disappeared as they began to the quinjet. Steve had been set to hysterics by the food Sam had brought them in DC, dishes that were usually his favourite. 'You feel shaky?'  
  
'Before?' Steve echoed. 'There was before?'  
  
'Yeah, it's OK if you don't remember,' Sam said.  
  
'Why?' Steve asked. 'Why? I forgot—what—?'  
  
'We're going over to talk to your friend, Tony,' Sam told him. 'We have to go give him some answers about what happened with Rumlow.'  
  
'Oh,' Steve said.   
  
'Hey,' Bucky protested, because Steve was suddenly pulling away from him. 'It's just me—'  
  
'Bucky should stay,' Steve said. Bucky felt like he'd been coated with a thin sheet of ice. Sam replaced him as a support to Steve on his spaghetti-legs. 'There are going to be questions,' Steve said, like that was an explanation, 'and it's bad. You don't need to hear—' Bucky let Steve take his hand away completely.  
  
Bucky stopped as soon as Steve took his hand away. It felt like his motor had been ripped out; his wheels were suddenly triangles, clunking flat, still, and alone. It felt the same as watching Steve's broadcasted testimony from the truth commission instead of sitting next to him, or watching prosthetics surgeons wheel him away in real life. It didn't matter that Steve was on his way to Tony; Bucky knew he was on his way to report, alone, without Bucky, who was the only one who knew what reporting did to him, the only one who had heard him whisper both lucid and asleep about the pain reporting caused. It burned his lungs to let it happen.  
  
'Is it bad that I asked him to stay?' Steve asked Sam. Bucky awkwardly rubbed his own arm, standing in the middle of empty space in a big hangar.  
  
'No,' Sam promised. 'No, you should ask us for anything you need.'  
  
'It's just bad,' Steve said. 'It's bad—I didn't want—He doesn't need to hear what Rumlow did or—Bucky doesn't need this.' Bucky needed Steve, that was all; it pained him to watch Sam be the one to escort him into the plane where the team was waiting. Natasha was there already, debriefing Tony and T'Challa on the notebook and what little she'd gotten so far out of Steve's patchy mind. Natasha had been with Steve in deprogramming. She'd been the one he wanted to comfort him sometimes, even when they had left the Tower and moved to DC. She'd be with Steve, and Sam would too. It would be OK, even if every part of him wanted to scream that it couldn't be OK at all.  
  
Steve and Sam disappeared into the quinjet. For a terrible moment, Bucky thought he might be drowning. He tried to do what Elizabeth told him to; he didn't make sure that his lungs were empty by coughing; he knew damn well he was only panicking because Steve was out of his sight. That didn't stop his heart pounding. He cleared his throat and breathed as deeply as he could.  
  
_You're not the only one who let this happen,_ Bucky reminded himself. He had been far from the only one who walked Steve into Rumlow's trap. Bucky tried not to blame himself or anyone; Rumlow had spent years underground planning this. Rumlow spent years making sure they'd fall for this; it was Rumlow's doing and Rumlow's fault.  
  
'How have you been holding up?' Wanda asked, appearing next to him, as tho she couldn't feel the ragged edges of Bucky's mind against hers. He let her soothe her hand over his arm comfortingly; she could cool the nervousness in him with her magic if he let her. Wanda was older than when they'd met, of course, but she looked younger with some healthy fat in her cheeks and over the muscle of her legs, no longer whipcord thin and enough only to fight with, not thrive or live on. Her hair was shinier; her eyes were brighter and clearer.  
  
'I'm fine,' Bucky lied uselessly. 'You know.' He felt weak admitting even so little vulnerability as _you know_ , even tho he knew she could find how he felt on her own if she wanted. She didn't question but stared, her eyes flicking between his. She touched his arm, rubbing a little to comfort him. He shrugged and she turned him away from the plane. He let her lead them to an alcove Tony had clearly had added, with footlockers and weapons cabinets. The jet was just out of sight; he could see only T'Challa's plane and their own car.  
  
'There's programming of HYDRA's still in his head,' Bucky went on, when the weight of her eyes prompted him, 'and he doesn't—he's only recognised me sometimes, and he didn't want me to stay with him just now.'   
  
'It's not all gone,' Wanda promised. 'I can hear him. He hasn't forgotten you completely, and the leftovers of the programme? They will fade when he has time from the—the electricity they make him have. I don't know how to say, but I can hear that they will fade.'  
  
'Good,' Bucky said. Nothing was good; he knew that. He sunk onto a footlocker. Wanda sat next to him, a few inches between them even after she tucked a leg up onto the top of the locker. He was relieved to know his failure hadn't stolen the memory of him from Steve completely. He linked his fingers together over his knees and couldn't help but ask:  
  
'Is he—When he first came home, he was in a lot of pain?' It maybe wasn't fair of him to ask this of her. Wanda looked away when she understood he wanted to know if Steve was suffering now.  
  
Bucky’s heart cracked because he understood that her avoidance was a confirmation that Steve was back to suffering, back to fear, back to needing yet to heal his brain enough to be able to even think. Wanda winced and he tried to get a hold of himself. It felt strange, being near her. She made him feel better, immensely, not just thru the magic they'd given her but by virtue of who she actually was. She also made him feel like hurting at all was lashing out, because she could feel all the pain he felt.  
  
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm the one who arrested him. I should have pried better and looked in his head; I should have searched him—' He remembered, very intentionally, so she could hear, how Sam and Helene used to make fun of him for saying sorry about things, as if they could be only his fault. She clearly heard him, because she stopped, and nodded heavily. Wanda touched his wrist for a moment, and he jostled her a little, amiable.  
  
'Hey, come on,' Bucky said. 'If all this is on anybody, it's on me. I didn't do enough; I knew—I should've called it earlier. I let him get snatched right under my nose. Can't stop a madman, at the end of the day, but if we're gonna be blaming people here, we should blame me.'  
  
Rumlow had started all of this, but Bucky should have known better. He should never have let himself risk Steve like that. Every tiny thing that had convinced him, that had made him seem so sure that they were safe; it had been meticulously set up by Rumlow. Rumlow had planned well enough to steal Bucky's whole world from him. No one else could really be to blame for that but the crazy fuck who did it, even if Bucky had been the one who was supposed to take care of Steve.  
  
'Hey, man,' Clint said. Bucky looked up. Wanda moved to let Clint into his cabinet. He thanked her in passing and then squinted at Bucky thru the open glass door. 'Wow, you look pretty shitty, even for somebody who got shot in the chest like a minute ago.'  
  
'Thanks, bud,' Bucky said tiredly. He rubbed his face. He felt like he was being crushed, with Steve out of his sight. Something bubbled around him like pressing magma; he felt like Steve was sure to dissolve into the sand Bucky had dreamed of once, to blow away and dissolve while away from Bucky. He knew Steve was safe here—he had to believe Steve would be safe here, if he was going to be safe anywhere—  
  
'My daughter says hi,' Clint added. 'She liked you a lot. Gets excited when you're on the news.' Bucky remembered Nicole, with her bright eyes and her curiosity about the magnets in his shield’s harness and the way he could make paper clips stand upright in her palm with it.  
  
'Make sure you say hi back,' Bucky said. 'I wish I had a little gift for her.'  
  
Clint laughed. 'If we don't all end up in jail, I'll get her a Bucky Bear on my way back home.'  
  
'Fuck,' Bucky said instinctively. 'They still fucking make those?' Clint laughed again. Bucky looked over at Wanda just in time to see her smiling too. 'Fuck, guys,' he said again. 'I'm so fucking sorry about all this. I'm sorry I'm not coming with you.'  
  
'This was a huge fuck-up,' he sighed, 'and since the Accords, I mean, you guys might bear a lot of the consequences.'  
  
‘I don’t think we’ll get arrested,’ Clint said. ‘Not even me, and I never signed. Maria’s playing relay and buying us time. Rumlow’s the real target; they all know that. And we're gonna get him.’ Bucky cracked a bare smile at Clint's confidence.  
  
‘It’s still a risk,’ Bucky said. Even with Maria running interference, things could go left. ‘It’s not fair that you take it on, even if it’s the right thing. It’s not fair.'  
  
'Steve would do the same for us,' Wanda said. No one pointed out the obvious: that the world hadn't been fair for a long, long time.  
  
'He would,' Clint agreed. Bucky leaned his elbows on his knees, sighing heavily. He wished he could do the same for these friends; he wished he could go with them to find Rumlow and make sure this ended. He wished he would have their backs, be there to call their shots, try to keep them safe. Even if he could hack it without shaking into shards, Steve was compromised. He couldn't do anything but stay with Steve; he could barely sit here knowing Steve was inside the quinjet trying to report to Tony and T'Challa.  
  
Bucky looked up when someone arrived in his periphery vision. He looked up and saw Tony, in the underarmour he preferred for short, hard fights. Bucky heard the back of his mind wish for Rumlow’s death wholeheartedly; he almost surprised himself with the force of his anger.  
  
'Hey, guys,' Tony said. He leaned an arm up onto one of the weapons cabinets. His thumb was still splinted but the bruising on his face had started to turn green at the edges. 'We've got a location, so gear up. We're lifting off in ten.' He nodded at Bucky, asking to talk with another tilt of his head.  
  
Bucky stood, moving out of the equipment alcove as Wanda and Clint began gearing up in earnest. Nat brushed by him too, stopping to meet his eye before moving into the alcove. Bucky did his best to give her a brave smile, but he knew he had to have failed with a worried grimace. He didn't want her to gear up and storm out, bruised up and exhausted. She'd had worse, he knew she'd say, but she deserved better.  
  
'Make sure Steve sleeps, like, the whole flight,' Nat ordered, sororally. 'He's still scattered, but he's better even after sleeping in the car.' Bucky felt relieved, that someone who had seen him healing before thought so. He prayed she was right.  
  
'I will,' Bucky promised. 'Be careful.'  
  
'You know me,' Nat said. 'I've got this.' Again, Bucky prayed she was right. 'And I'll see you soon,' she lied. They both knew the Accords would guarantee political conflict that would force them into some distance.  
  
'I'll miss you,' he said instead. She nodded him on, on to where Tony waited for him to follow. They went into the main hangar, leaving the team to suit up behind them. Bucky saw Sam and T'Challa escorting Sam into the Wakandan jet. Fuck, they'd be moving soon.  
  
'Steve gave you a location?' Bucky asked, crossing his arms as if Tony might otherwise be able to see the terrible anxiety coating his chest. 'Has he been there before? Did Rumlow just tell him?'  
  
'Don't know,' Tony said, almost curtly. 'We're going to Siberia.' He stopped in the empty hangar, turning to face Bucky. 'Natasha's never been where Steve pointed out, so we're going in blind, no floorplan, so.' Bucky cursed. Rumlow might be there already. They just didn't have enough information and now his friends were gonna be essentially fighting uphill.  
  
'Grab your shield, Cap,' Tony went on. 'Now that we know where we're headed, time crunch is on.'  
  
Bucky blinked. He shifted his weight onto his back foot, his arms suddenly feeling defensive where they were crossed against his chest. He almost didn't know how to say it; it had been so obvious he couldn't believe Tony didn't know. 'What?' Tony prompted; Bucky's face must have given away his hesitation.  
  
Bucky said, 'I'm seeking asylum with Steve.'  
  
Tony's face shifted—cool and blank suddenly—and he didn't say anything. Bucky shrugged helplessly. He felt three feet tall, standing there, in the right, in the shadow of Tony's incredulity.    
  
'I'm his partner,' Bucky added, feeling pathetic, trying to make better the fact that Captain America didn't exist anymore. Bucky wasn't enough to be Captain America anymore. Steve Rogers needed a partner, and Bucky was only just enough to be that.  
  
Bucky had almost shaken apart after fighting and killing or destroying robots in Sokovia. He couldn't go after Rumlow and his army of people who had been created like Steve and could fight like Steve, not even to make sure nothing like this could happen again. He would hesitate, wonder if he could snap them out of it like he'd snapped out Steve on the helicarrier, if he could just say or do the right thing, anything, a better thing than killing. He'd hesitate with guilt and misplaced empathy and he’d get someone killed—He might even get himself killed.  
  
‘So—What?” Tony said. ‘You’re not coming?’ Bucky shook his head softly: _no_. Tony scoffed, turning away. He shook his head in disbelief and let out a broken laugh. He swiped at his face with his unbroken hand. He turned back to Bucky and spat the words again as if laying them out as ugly as they were could change Bucky's mind. 'You're not coming.'  
  
'Would you?' Bucky said. 'Would you go, in my shoes?'  
  
'Yes!' Tony said

'Really?' Bucky said. 'If Pepper had been wiped—if she—you would be able to walk away? Fly out to try to kill somebody while she's snapping in and out of lucidity without you, terrified?' Bucky had chosen to say _fly out_ because Tony was going to zoom after Rumlow in the jet, but saying it out loud made Bucky realise he was in for a multi-hour flight too. By the time he got to the word _terrified_ , his voice had a shake to it and he found himself in a strange position of hoping he and Tony were estranged enough that Tony couldn't tell.  
  
'You sent him in alone to report to me,' Tony pointed out. Bucky hadn't at all; Steve had kept him out; Steve had protected Bucky from knowing the full consequences of his fuck-up, at least right away. It had been crushing to be excluded but all the same, Bucky couldn't even imagine the full brunt of what Steve might have had happen to him. Before Bucky could try to protest, Tony barrelled on, cursing.  
  
'Jesus Christ, Buck, _we_ sent him in there, in Nigeria,' Tony snapped. All the air went out of Bucky's lungs like he'd been punched. 'We're the ones who sent him in: you and me. We're the ones who need to make this right.' Bucky tried to haul air into his lungs without gasping and creaking audibly.  
  
Of course Bucky blamed himself for Nigeria but fuck if he didn't prickle and sting at the accusation from Tony. He wanted to hurl the accusation back in Tony's face to hide how badly he himself was broken, to blame everything on Tony, Rashida, on Ross, on anyone who had promised him Steve would be safe. He wanted to be _cruel_ about it and force Tony to hurt like Bucky was hurting now.  
  
'I can't make it right,' Bucky said, keeping his voice careful and measured. 'It just needs to be stopped.'  
  
It was too late to fix anything; people were dead and Steve had been wiped. The Avengers would be held to speculation if not scrutiny. Nothing could fix any of that; it was just about stopping things before they got worse, before Rumlow got what he wanted, even if he hadn't gotten to blow the building he'd wanted, or to take Steve with him. Bucky prayed he didn't get his new army of crazed neo-HYDRA or neo-Nazis, whoever these insane serumed people might be.    
  
'Things are going to get worse if you don't step up now,' Tony said. Bucky swallowed the angry acid licking up his throat from his gut in flames.  
  
'Tony, Steve is being taken, _now_ , to seek _asylum_ with T'Challa's father.' Bucky strained to keep his voice level. 'If I don't go with Steve now—' he said, almost desperate. He took a step closer to Tony as if that step could force his friend to understand. '—I might not get to go at all. Ross wouldn't even need to arrest me to stop me from getting asylum; there are so many things that could keep me—'  
  
'And so you're gonna run from this?' Tony said, cutting Bucky off. ‘That's more important than stopping Rumlow?’  
  
'It's not about important,' Bucky said. 'It's all I can do.' Tony turned away but he didn't storm off like his body language said he wanted to. Bucky fished desperately for something to say. 'Tony, I meant it when I said I couldn't handle fighting anymore. I meant it when I said I wouldn't sign the Accords. I meant it when I said I love Steve and that means when he's out of commission like this, I am too.'  
  
'I can't believe you're not coming,' Tony said. He shook his head again; Bucky imagined he was trying to will something to change.  
  
'You'd stay with Pepper,' Bucky said again, but it sounded pathetic this time, an excuse and a lie. 'If she needed you like this.' Tony looked back at him, betrayal thick in his eyes.  
  
'I thought you were my friend,' Tony said. 'I thought you'd have my back here.' Bucky dropped his head between his shoulders for a moment, absorbing the accusation before daring to look up again.  
  
'Fuck. Tony,' Bucky said, 'of course I'm your friend.'  
  
'Look, Cap, I know you got rattled last time, but you shake it off; you get over—'  
  
'I won't get over it if I get trapped away from Steve while a legal battle goes on,' Bucky corrected cutting Tony off. 'I love you, Tony, but I can't do it.'  
  
He wouldn't get over being separated from Steve, not again and certainly not like this. He had grieved for Steve for so long and so wholly only to learn that Steve had been alive and suffering instead; Bucky had felt like a widow all over when Steve had to go into deprogramming. The distance had made the fact that Steve was alive barely a gift at all; it had been a unique torture and Bucky couldn't bear it again. 'I thought he was dead for so long; I can't leave him.'  
  
Tony was still shaking his head, looking away. Bucky couldn't bring himself to demand they meet each other's eyes. He was too vulnerable already; hiding his gaze wouldn't hide a thing. It was terrible to leave his friends to clean this up—Wanda and Pietro were still practically babies—but—Bucky shrugged again, wishing so badly for Tony so somehow understand.  
  
Bucky had stopped fighting for a reason. He couldn't keep fighting and he most certainly couldn't do it if it meant leaving Steve. Finally, Tony nodded, swiping at the back of his neck.  
  
'Wow,' he said, inarticulate. He looked up at Bucky, eyes a little too shiny, and he looked so blindingly like his father for a moment that Bucky lost his breath again. 'So, what the fuck? Is this goodbye?' Bucky shrugged, useless.  
  
Bucky had been the one heading into battle when he had seen Howard last. He hadn't thought it would be the last time. He hadn't even said a proper goodbye; the meeting had ended and Bucky had hurried to debrief his team. He supposed he was lucky he knew this was a farewell this time. Tony hugged him briefly. He didn't lift his left arm, broken thumb perhaps the reason for the one-armed embrace. Bucky worried about it all the same, because Steve was nearly as strong as he was, and Tony was getting older. He'd been tossed and tossed hard.  
  
'I really hope not,' Bucky managed. 'I pray that it won't be.'  
  
He let Tony go, holding what seemed to be his good shoulder for only a moment. He cleared his throat. ‘I, uh, I brought my shield,' he said. 'I just thought—Your dad made it, and I—I don’t know when I’ll see you again.’ Tony laughed, dry and brittle. 'You should keep it. It was his, and I'm not fighting anymore.' Tony laughed again and shook his head like he thought Bucky was a moron.

‘Keep it,’ Tony said. ‘It’s probably the only good thing he ever made.’ Bucky nodded, suddenly acutely aware of where all of this really started. He wondered if he'd known Howard when he was a double agent, or if seeing America drop nuclear bombs had complicated good and evil too badly for him to understand it anymore. Bucky hoped he'd died before Howard had changed; he hoped Howard had changed.

'You know, the best thing he made was you,' Bucky said. He hoped Tony survived. He hoped Tony made it home to Pepper, to rest with her and maybe gain some of his own solaces. Bucky hoped he was headed to some peace too, somewhere safe for Steve and him. Tony looked like he’d been struck by those words; Bucky looked away and tried to keep his voice steady. 

'Good luck out there, Tony,' Bucky said. 'Get home.'  
  
'We will,' Tony said. 'You make sure you do too, Cap.' Bucky gave him a smile, and turned to board his own plane.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final part of the come home yesterday series

Rumlow pulled a long drag from his bottle as he looked over the cryochamber tanks. One was dark and empty, the tank of a soldier killed in training by his pseudo-siblings. Its presence had, like a warning, made Brock wait for the Avengers to land to wake them up; it wouldn't do to have made it this far and then to wake them without anything but each other for them to toy with. It would be a real failure if Brock made it all the way here and then the soldiers be destroyed in vain.

The empty tank was dark and bitter in contrast to its glowing mates, a reminder of the real Winter Soldier Brock had let also lost. Part of him still couldn’t believe he had lost Rogers; he felt like he should be able to turn and see the boy, in the warehouse in Rabat, pale and shaky and waiting for Brock to curl around him or order him up.

The folding chair Brock had set down to observe the tanks was uncomfortable; the metal crest rail dug into his shoulders when he leaned back to tilt his bottle at his lips. He had wanted to win a war with these soldiers at his back but he’d lost the real Winter Soldier and the notebook to command the rest. He'd wanted a war throne and instead, he was here.

Brock tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that Rogers had escaped. He tried to tell himself that Rogers had been a broken tool, with broken programming, unable to complete tasks. Rogers had been a risk, unworthy. All the same, Brock wished he still had his hands on the soldier. It was lonelier than Brock had thought it would be without him. He hadn’t been lonely when HYDRA had fallen; he’d been driven, eager to rebuild it, at least enough to give him back his power. Now...

Brock’s plans had so far not come to fruition. He had wanted to steal Rogers and use him to recover what he’d been arrogant enough to let the Avengers take like he thought he was playing switch-a-roo with children. He’d be arrogant enough to assume escaping the Nigerian police would be a breeze. He’d been wrong and he’d paid the price. He lost his chance to go out in a real blaze of glory, blowing the UNEOB with Rogers at his side, then using these four soldiers to begin again an organization to bring order to the world. Maybe he would have won a small corner of the world and ruled its ashes as a king. He had wanted to learn to control these new Soldiers, which he’d never seen in person but had envied the tales of. He had wanted to, but Rogers had stolen the book.

Brock tried to lie to himself, but he had no chance of controlling these soldiers without the Colonel’s book. No one but the Colonel had been successful in controlling these weapons; their notebook was the missing piece to real success. When the Colonel had hidden his book when he’d gone into hiding, no one else had succeeded in using the Soldiers. They had been retired too, all of HYDRA’s hope put on Rogers’s back and steel arm.

Rogers had stolen the book when he’d abandoned Brock, fled while Brock was distracted by a man in a catsuit. Brock had lost him and he wouldn’t get a second chance this time.

Brock pulled again from the bottle.

‘It’s stupid,’ he announced to the frozen tubes. Rogers had always been a brainwashed prisoner. Their relationship was that of handled and handler. It was stupid to think that Barnes had replaced Brock, just because Rogers fled no doubt to him when the asset used to fall into perfect line with Brock's whispered codes. It was stupid to feel jealous and lonely; Brock had failed and when the Avengers descended, they would want to arrest him for real, and there wouldn’t be any bargaining with the prosecution.

There was a dim, distant drag of frozen metal on black ice, echoing down the corridor from the elevator chamber. The Avengers had arrived. They had dragged open the icy entry.

The sad party Brock had thrown for himself to celebrate making it here and to grieve not making it with all the weapons he needed was over. He hoisted himself to his feet with a groan.

‘Well, this is it, chicklets,’ he sighed. He ran his hands along the smooth, perfect glass of the nearest cryochamber, admiring the beautiful specimen within. His throat stung with the knowledge of how badly he had failed these supersoldiers. He had wanted to return them to glory and use them to restore some order to the world, and he’d lost the book to make it happen. He’d let his prisoner take it and then lost him too.

‘I know we’ve been turned into an isthmus by Avengers the Great, but you—You can still pull this off,’ Brock told them. He patted the glass. ‘Just—We’ll let you loose, and we’ll figure out the rest in the rubble.’ He drew his hand away.

Brock swiped over his face. He tried not to feel hopeless. These soldiers couldn’t be aimed, not without the book. He hoped they could be chaos enough to destroy the Avengers in the lab Brock was prepared to lock down and trap them in.

He slouched over to another tube. 'It's not your fault, that the plan's ruined,' Brock promised the tube's inhabitant. He took another long slog of his bottle, remembering the force which had descended upon his hideout and absconded with Rogers, leaving him to flee from some superhero from the depths of Africa. He tried to console himself; no one could have predicted Wakanda would come out of its shell—wherever that cat lived—for Rogers.

Rumlow straightened, leaving his bottle on the edge of a panel box. He stepped over the oxygen tubes leading to the chambers, ready to flood the tube and force out the gel, warming and waking the weapons within.

The control room was secured from within, at the back of the chamber arena. Rumlow sealed the door and waited.

^^^

The Wakandan com units rang crisp and sharp in Nat's ear. As she waited for Pietro to key in the access code and haul open the heavy and frozen door, she wondered if T'Challa would help her give a set of the beautiful, crystal-clear receivers to Maria for her birthday. They rang clearer than any com units she had worn before. Her ambient hearing was also unimpaired by the little dot sending sound thru the thin bone behind her ear. The idea of getting the gift was frivolous, of getting out of the bunker and to a world with enough political stability for her to ask a girlish, romantic favour of T'Challa, especially now that he was heading back into his impenetrable borders.

He'd already left with Bucky and Steve. Bucky and Steve were already gone.

That thought had shaken her on the flight to Siberia. Somehow, in waiting for this to be over, for the air to settle again, she'd expected to return to Melissa Nguyen's hospital, where Steve would be waiting for her in the small rooms there. As they took off away from T'Challa's futuristic jet, she had realised that Bucky and Steve were staying behind and then going away.

The door ground open, scraping over the same marks in the black permafrost that Rumlow must have left when he keyed the door open. Nat hoped he hadn't been inside long enough to wake the frozen soldiers and that they weren’t headed up against a small army. She lifted her palm slightly, and Pietro let her take the lead.

Nat entered the bunker first. She wasn't surprised to find a limited alcove, an elevator at the end. The stale air that was too cold to even smell like mildew from its disuse and abandonment. She was surprised at how familiar the place looked, down to the manufacturer’s marks on the elevator door, the base codename on a plaque to her left. The set up was the same, even if she had never been to this exact bunker.

The Widows were raised like this, in a bunker admittedly warmer than this abandoned site, but with the same aboveground lobby and hidden lower floors. They had had underground levels containing fighting chambers and shooting ranges and solitary cells and surgical rooms, and galleries with high, dark windows. Rumlow, an American HYDRA operative: he had no reason to know the lower hallways like the back of his hand (probably); he had no reason to have been in a Russian cell before (but HYDRA had been inside SHIELD all along so maybe he had). They'd have a small advantage, in the nooks and crannies she could highlight for her team (unless she was wrong).

Tony used his palm as a flashlight, peering at the shoddy welding along the seams of the ceiling. He asked: 'How are we looking?'

'Familiar,' Nat replied. Nat pulled a tactical phone from her belt, lighting its screen and skimming her finger in the shape of the halls below them. The phone projected her lines onto the rusty steel floor; the team gathered to study the blueprint she sketched. 'This won't be to scale,' she said, 'but this is what these bases looked like where I was kept.'

'If it is the same layout, this is where the Soldiers will be—stored,' Nat said, tripping over how to explain the frozen humans somewhere below their feet. There had been a cryochamber and the recalibration chair in the same room where she'd grown up, like a Boogeyman in the corner, watching the girls as they trained in the open floor space below observation windows. 'I'll split off here,' she added, pointing to a place on the second sublevel, one above where she was sending them. 'I know a back way into the control room, and I'll be able to keep the soldiers frozen from there, or else lock down the room.' She pointed out several good hiding spots, a likely armoury, and then she tapped a door she'd drawn at the end of the hall which lead to the storage room.

'Don't you think Rumlow will have warmed them up by now?' Tony asked.

'I don't think he can control them without the notebook,' Nat said. 'He'll have waited for us. He'll have heard the door, too.'

'Wanda, Pietro, you hold this door,' she went on, highlighting a barricade before the storage hangar, calling the shots when Tony might have outranked her. He didn't question her, just flipped his mask over his face. His eyes lit up and glowed blue. 'No one out, understand? Anything it takes. We don't know what we're going to be stumbling into, who might make it out here.' Pietro bristled at being left behind, but Wanda nodded. Wanda didn't underestimate her brother nor herself; she understood Nat was leaving them as a last line of impressive defence, not shielding them from the potential clash. The Avengers couldn't afford the escape of anyone, not Rumlow, and certainly not one of HYDRA's final weapons.

'The rest of you with me,' Tony said from behind his glowing mask. 'If the Soldiers are awake, it will take us all to contain them.' She felt trapped in the elevator with the team, in a bottleneck on their way to a battlefield. It was a service elevator, enough room for all of them because it had had to be room enough for whatever horrible equipment they were about to find.

She hoped to God Rumlow hadn't memorized the codes locking the steel doors, that he'd refer to a physical page each time he came to one, slowing him down, that this bunker was as well barricaded as the ones she'd grown up in, to keep people inside as much as threats out. In the brief reprieve of movement in the elevator, Nat couldn't help but think of all the times she saw Rumlow taking photos of documents they were recovering with his own phone. He probably had scans of the notebook Steve had taken from him. Rumlow could be one step ahead like he always seemed to be. She remembered ignoring his sneaking around the way she expected people to ignore her stealing files on Fury's orders. She wished now she had realised what a crap way to run things it was, enough sneaking around expected amongst each other that even a spy like Natasha hadn’t noticed a saboteur. She wished now she'd known corrupt behaviour as corrupt and stopped Rumlow before any of modern HYDRA had had a chance.

'Keep his attention when you find him,' Nat said as she stepped out alone, vulnerable, hoping to God the bunker kept looking so familiar as she explored its layout. Clint gave her a nod farewell, silently telling her to watch herself, and the elevator continued downwards without her.

The control room she knew a back way into was secure, meant for doctors and investors to watch volatile experiments regain consciousness and ambulation. There was a backdoor in the case that the experiments made the front door an impossible escape route. In the case that the weapons turned on those aiming them, they'd given themselves a hatch.

She prayed that Rumlow didn't know it, that she'd really have a chance to sneak up on a chamber designed for observation and control. She knelt at the vent which lead there and struggled for a moment with a screwdriver from her belt with rusted screws. The screwdriver—in typical Stark fashion—was machined out of such high-quality metal that it too-easily stripped the soft head of the screw when its ancient and rusted threads refused to budge.

'Motherfucker,' she cursed, because nothing could ever be simple. She put the screwdriver back, scooted away, and hit the vent register with a pen-sized repulsor Tony had made for exactly this purpose. She'd never used it before, but the blue energy cut thru the register's blades easily. She felt inspired by the metal hot enough to briefly glow red, a fatal threat. Once the register blades were severed, she pushed with her leather glove and the dull blades bent. There were leather handholds tacked into the vent inside. Nat grinned, relieved at what felt like a confirmation.

This was the exact controller escape hatch she had expected to find, down to the leather grips of the escape route. It felt like a confirmation that she'd given her team the right map of the same layout of bunker, down to the venting system, that she'd grown up in. Nat climbed into the vent, moving easily thru space which had been designed for a larger, male scientist.

Lowering herself from the leather ladder into a position that would let herself crawl along the horizontal passage took some manoeuvring to manage head first, the vent not designed for anything but going up and out and away. She could hear voices bouncing in the small vent, which meant the rest of the team had made it to the cryochambers' storage in good time. She crawled.

Shortly, she got there. She stared down thru the ceiling grate meant to be a last-resort for the man below her. Rumlow stood, grotesque with his scars casting shadows and his colouring made sick by the cheap and ancient halide lights. He was taunting the team beyond his secure control room with its bulletproof glass and buttons controlling the cryochambers outside.

Three of the chambers had been activated, only a matter of time before they released dangerous and insane supersoldiers from an unsupervised slumber. From the sounds of the clashing, one tank had already sent someone, confused and barely unfrozen, out swinging. Rumlow was activating the fourth tank, beginning its draining sequence.

Nat pulled the pen repulsor out again. She slotted it between the register blades for the best aim, braced herself for the bang of the recoil against the metal, and fired.

Rumlow dropped, shot in the top of the head with a neat blast of plasma.

Nat dropped the register out a second later, the escape vent not screwed into place, but meant to be knocked off balance and pulled out quickly. Like before, it took some manoeuvring to move thru the vent in the opposite way it had been meant to be used. She had come along headfirst in order to see what was going on, but now it meant tumbling out into the small control room that way too, trying to avoid the floor with the body leaking blood sluggishly, without any blood pressure to force a bleed.

She managed to get down, one foot braced on the stool Rumlow had sat on, and the other on the control panel itself as she held onto the edges of the vent hatch. Beyond the bulletproof glass—a decayed and coppered bloodstain swiped decades ago across the bottom right corner—one soldier had in fact come out swinging. He was being tugged into cuffs by Sam, not even struggling anymore. Sam crouched in front of him and was speaking to him in slow and quiet tones as the rest of the team reacted to her appearance in the locked room.

'Did you kill him?' Tony demanded, from where he was trying to stop a draining tank at the source. 'Nat, did you just kill him?'

'Yep,' Nat said, without patience for hedging her words. She studied the control panel, thankful for old-style labels with raised Cyrillic letters, legible even with faded and worn-away paint. She stopped the other tanks from warming and draining.

'We should have arrested him,' Tony said. 'Ross wanted—'

'I am done with thinking about what Ross wants,' Natasha snapped. 'Rumlow is dead. It's over.'

'You don't get to play executioner—'

'Ross is the executioner,' Natasha said. She said it with force, even if her prickly anger came out of defensiveness. She didn't know if she were a Widow, a bad judge of the right thing, as bad as Rumlow or the people in tubes here in this place just like where she lived as a girl. 'He signed a death warrant already; he handed it to the German team, not us; that's the only difference. He gave permission to kill Rumlow and Steve the moment either of them resisted arrest. Rumlow would have resisted, and since he escaped a secure compound last time, I figured we'd perform one of those preemptive strikes you're so fond of.'

Tony bristled and she ignored his delicate ego. Rumlow was dead under her feet, his melted eye staring up at her from where the body lay. 'Wanda, Pietro,' she called into her com. 'The soldiers are contained, and Rumlow is down.'

'We could have _arrested_ —' Tony tried again.

'Why?' Natasha demanded. She almost shouted her words. She was taken by surprise at how angry she felt, suddenly. 'Why? What's the _point_? He shot Bucky. He stole Steve's mind from him and forced him to fight his friends and participate in murder. You heard Steve's report; you know what Rumlow's done to him; you know what's happened because we let Rumlow escape. Why should we give Rumlow the chance evade our custody again?'

'This was our fault, Tony,' Natasha snapped, standing over a body and sick from the coppery smell of blood. 'This whole thing, every new death on Steve's conscience, every person Rumlow slaughtered on his way around HYDRA stashes: we let it happen when we agreed to negotiate with him, when we gave him time with Steve.'

'So can you let go of your pride for one goddamn second?' she said. 'We could not contain him. He proved that. Trying to arrest him or distract him while those tanks drained would have raised our chance of failure.'

Tony turned away, shaking his head and deflating, like he was giving up on a principle. Natasha looked at the dead body below her. She didn't feel sad, or guilty, or unsure that finishing this was the right thing to do. She didn't feel pleased, either, or any more restful than she had an hour ago.

^^^

Descending past the illusion of the forest was something that always amused T'Challa. He went to stand at the helm behind Okoye, watching her pilot them down and thru back into their corner of the world. The real, thick jungles flew by underneath them, and then the jet crossed thru the false canopy of the next ones.

Okoye flew them with ease thru the capital and past, to Shuri's mineside lab. She landed them without a problem, but all the same, T'Challa wondered at the rumour that Bucky Barnes was afraid of flying. He wondered if even this plane, an example of the best craftsmanship and engineering in the world, made Bucky feel unsteady. He hoped not. Wakanda was technologically more advanced than the rest of the world, but good technology means nothing against irrational fear.

T'Challa stepped off the plane first, with Nakia at his back. Shuri stood there waiting for him, arms crossed and a wicked grin on her face. He echoed her salute and then she rushed forward to give him the quickest of hugs, breaking off to ask:

'Brother, what's this I hear that you've brought a puzzle for me?' T'Challa tsked at her.

'It's not entertainment, Shuri,' he said. He shook her off where she clutched his forearms, too excited to contain herself.

'But fixing the Winter Soldier will be a puzzle,' she said. 'And it's for me to solve, yes?'

'Be polite,' T'Challa said. He couldn't help but urge her. 'They're in the sleeping cabin.'

'Be polite,' Shuri grumbled. 'They are guests and I'm a princess; they should be polite.'

'Shuri,' Nakia said. 'Twelve percent politeness; they've been thru a lot.' Shuri nodded at that, taking it seriously under advisement as she left, up the ramp to the jet.

'Just like that, she listens to you?' T'Challa complained.

'Just like that,' Nakia said. 'I'm not her big brother.' He chuckled but she didn't crack even a smile.

‘What's bothering you?’ T’Challa asked Nakia, watching her pack away her weapons as his sister swept towards his friends. 'Nakia?’ She shrugged, briefly meeting his eyes and then hiding hers. It wasn’t like her to be bashful.

‘It’s nothing,’ Nakia said, ‘or maybe it’s petty. I don’t know.’

‘I haven’t known you to be petty,’ T’Challa said.

‘It feels—‘ She started and then stopped. Nakia steeled herself and then turned to face him. Her green scarf made her eyes pop, bright and determined. ‘I have advocated so many times that Wakanda should take refugees. If we took those our war dogs help directly, even only those: we would change the lives of so many people who need hope; we’d give it to them.’ T'Challa lowered his head; she had asked for this so many times, and T'Challa had always said it was impossible.

‘And now we have taken refugees,’ Nakia sighed. ‘And it just isn’t what I thought. And it isn’t likely to happen again.’ She shook her head like her shoulders ached from the weight of the world.

T’Challa couldn’t think of how to respond. It was not the Wakandan way, to get involved with things outside their borders. Nakia was right; he had ignored civil wars and droughts and political crises before he'd been compelled to help Bucky Barnes, who'd inspired him with his humility and empathy in consideration. Nakia levelled him a glare and he almost shook. What was wrong with him that he hadn’t been inspired by her? He felt ashamed that his meetings with Bucky Barnes had been finally able to make him feel the compassion for people beyond their borders that Nakia had been hurling at him for months.

‘You say our country is the only one who can protect these two, but that’s true about all the refugees I had wanted our country to welcome. We can save them from things no one else can. There are problems smaller than HYDRA,' Nakia said, softening her glare. 'If we were to apply ourselves to those too...’

‘We should do more,’ she said. ‘There are people who had the misfortune of being born to the west or east of our borders who suffer when we have cures.’

‘I’m not saying we should not have helped these two,’ Nakia added. ‘Fine, OK? I understand Barnes is your friend, and the little I saw Steve—I understand. But _I_ am more than them to you, and you never flew off in a rush to help my refugees.’ She turned away, shoving her battle rings into their case and tucking that onto the armoury shelf.

‘So, I feel petty,’ Nakia finished. ‘Is it political or personal? I don’t know.’ She tugged her casual wear from the hook below her shelf, the knitted fibres catching the light with their purls. She pulled it on, covering her bare arms and their lean muscle.

‘You’re right, Nakia,’ T'Challa admitted. Nakia stopped in her efforts to dress, before turning to consider T'Challa carefully. He didn't dare look away from her. He'd failed to see her point on this time and time again; he couldn't believe he'd taken her on a mission to help some white men before he'd seen her real point. They could help others, and Wakanda had instead shuttered herself away. 'I failed to listen to you, and then I heard your words somewhere else.' 

‘Say it again.’

‘You are right,’ he repeated. Nakia didn't gift him a smile. He hadn't earned it yet. ‘Help me, then,' he asked her. 'The Elders will be upset I've brought these refugees; it will be work to convince them to help others too. Help me make the others see, as you made me see.’

‘The Elders’ Council will be upset, but soon you will be King,’ Nakia said. ‘Not them. You're beholden to your own conscience, not always to the traditions of our Elders. Shuri changes things all the time; if she sees room for improvement, she makes it.'

‘A King needs a Queen,’ T’Challa said, as close as he could come to a dare. Nakia laughed at him.

‘Bah,’ she said; ‘prove you can listen, _then_ we’ll talk.’

‘That’s when we’ll talk about this, is it?’ He demanded, latching on to that promise to consider his proposal before she could catch it herself. He wasn’t quite quick enough; Nakia was laughing again:

‘Not that we’ll talk about that— _No_!’ she cackled. ‘Stop it. Bast, there are more important things.’ She let him swing an arm around her in the momentary privacy of the landing pad nonetheless. 

‘I’m going to learn from this,’ T’Challa promised her. He held her eyes and hoped she believed him. ‘Next time I find myself in a problem: it will be your advice I consider first.’

‘Sometimes it would be better to ask Okoye,’ Nakia told him frankly. T’Challa grinned.

‘Okoye is a general,’ he said. ‘Hopefully, I won't need her advice for a long time. Hopefully, even if I upset the Elder Council, we’ll have peace for a long time.’

'You decide what kind of king you will be,' Nakia assured him. 'Even if it upsets the ancestors and the Elders too.' T'Challa reached out to take her hand, and she let him. Her skin was calloused, but he still took the gesture as soft.

^^^

Maria was anxious. Her knee wouldn't stop bouncing where she balanced on the arm of Nat's couch, waiting for her to come home. It felt wrong, waiting in Nat's own apartment, for Nat to come back from the State Department's hassling at customs, even if Maria knew she'd done all she could and now had to stay away in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Still, she felt like she was wasting precious time, waiting on the arm of Nat's couch, like she should be pulling strings in the background while Nat and the Avengers talked their way out of trouble. She felt like an intruder in Nat's home, without her here too. She hoped she wasn't overstepping Natasha's well-defined borders of personal space. Maria forced her leg to stop bouncing.

When the door opened, Maria had leapt to her feet almost before her brain registered that she heard the latch. Natasha barely stepped into her own home, glossing her eyes over her surroundings. She looked like she was barely propped up on her bones, dead-tired and wan. She stood in the doorway and heaved out a sigh. She didn't look at Maria, as if she hadn't noticed her at all.

'Hey,' Maria said. 'How are you?' Her voice sounded too soft in the harsh silence. Nat just looked around the room for a moment, at anything but Maria's face, and then she shook her head. It was a stupid question; Nat wasn't all right and asking how she was only pointed that out. Maria grasped for something better to say. 'What can I do?' Nat seemed to struggle for words.

'I just want to shower and sleep.'

Maria nodded, even if it wasn't like Nat to resist Maria's affection. She accepted it stiffly, sometimes, but more often Nat loved like a cat fresh home from the shelter: taking every scrap of gentle fondness lest it be the last one given in a lifetime. Maria moved forward and took Nat's bag, taking the bare weight of her spare Kevlar and small personal armoury from her. She shut the door and rushed to dump the bag onto the sofa as Nat walked in an overwrought haze of exhaustion.

Maria followed her into the ensuite, hesitant and with her out-of-place feeling renewed. Nat didn't even kick off her boots until after she'd turned on the shower.

'Can I—?' Maria tried, but her voice gave out when Nat didn't even look over, didn't even tilt her head to listen. Maria felt like she might suffocate, watching Nat dim and bare like this, stripping her tacsuit like only muscle memory demanded it. Nat stuck a hand into the water to test it, and then stood there frozen.

'Nat,' Maria said, when Nat kept her hand in the spray, testing, even as Maria could begin to see steam creeping thru the air. 'Natasha.'

Maria did not expect Nat's face to crumple into withheld sobs. She crossed the scant two feet between them, shushing Nat before her hand even made contact with her bare shoulder. She pulled Nat into her chest, gathering her into her arms. Natasha was shaking, too fine for Maria to have noticed with anything but touch. 'Hey, it's all right,' she tried, soothing her hands over Nat's bare skin.

'I don't want—I don't want to be this person who cries,' she said, bringing her arms up between them, pressing her face into her palms.

'It's OK,' she said. Natasha's horrible shivers didn't stop and she let out another muffled, held-in sob. 'Let it out; 's all right,' Maria begged, and pulled Nat towards the shower, the warm water, as if the warmth would stop Nat's trembling. Maria didn't strip her own clothes, letting the spray splash her as she pushed Nat's sweat-sticky hair from her face. Maria thought for a moment her wet socks would be slippery on the smooth floor of the shower, but it was easy to stand and support Natasha's weight as her shoulders hitched and she tried to keep herself in one piece.

'You’re all right,’ Maria promised, as Nat leaned her forehead into Maria's neck, hiding from the world. ‘You’re home.’ Natasha stopped shaking but didn’t pull away. Maria rubbed soapy circles on Nat's back, trying to figure out how to possibly ask what happened. She didn't even know if she should ask; maybe she should pretend she knew nothing about this, like she pretended she hadn't known Nat's background intimately when she was Assistant Director of SHIELD.

‘I shot Rumlow in the head,’ Natasha whispered eventually. ‘I didn’t even give him a chance to see me; I just shot him.’

‘Good,’ Maria said, unable to help it. 'Fuck him.' She knew the cruelty Rumlow must have had the free reign to perform as a secret HYDRA agent running his STRIKE unit. Hell, she knew what cruelty of his had been excused by legitimate members of SHIELD. She'd watched the footage of his breakout from Nigeria, and she'd read the list of the explosives he'd failed to recover from the Nigerian lockup. He had planned to massacre a lot of people, and if he'd succeeded, he would have tried to have used supersoldiers to shred the earth. No one was going to suffer for his absence.

'Is it?' Natasha asked. 'We weren't supposed to pursue him at all; the people who were supposed to pursue him were supposed to arrest him.'

'You know that's only true on paper,' Maria said. She pushed her fingers into Nat's hair, working her conditioner thru her red strands. 'Don't lie to yourself. The German group had orders to shoot to kill when they faced resistance; you didn't do anything they wouldn't—'

'He hadn't even seen me,' Nat whispered. 'I shot him in the head from inside an escape hatch.'

'You know he would have gone down swinging if he hadn't gone down by surprise,' Maria said. 'Maybe he would have taken you down, or someone else. You don't need to doubt yourself here. Rumlow planned to blow the entire UNEOB building; he would have easily tried to kill you if you hadn't struck first.' Maria lifted Nat's head from Maria's shoulder to rinse her red hair. Nat's eyes closed and she let Maria bully her back under the spray. 'I'm glad you're OK; I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you ended it so quickly.' She couldn't go so far to say Nat had done the right thing by murdering him, even if she felt it was true. It wouldn't do to say it to Nat; she deserved to work thru her guilt on her own, without Maria trying to bury it with relief and gratitude, tainting those.

'I just—' Nat said, as Maria worked her fingers over Nat's scalp. ' _Fuck_. This was so bad. We're such fucking idiots, to have let all this—' Nat huffed an anxious breath. 'Fuck.'

'I know,' Maria murmured. 'It's all over now. You found Steve; you stopped Rumlow. It's over, now.' Natasha opened her eyes. She didn't look less exhausted for having stood in a warm stream of clean water.

'Bucky's gone,' Natasha said. 'Steve, too. They're going to—They're taking asylum in Wakanda; I'm never going to see them again.' Maria's heart sank.

'They're going to Wakanda?' she repeated. Natasha nodded miserably. 'No one goes to Wakanda.' Natasha shrugged.

'T'Challa isn't the isolate his father is,' she said. 'I don't know. He agreed to shelter them, and they went.'

'I'm so sorry, Nat,' Maria said. Natasha looked away. She pushed the water off after a final moment in the heat. Maria remembered she was still wearing her clothes as they immediately began to cool. She felt silly and wet, but more than that, she felt worried. 'I know you're close to them. I know this will be hard.' Maria dripped all over the floor as she stepped out of the shower stall to fetch a towel from Nat's cupboard.

'I thought,' Nat began, before halting. Maria tucked the towel around her shoulders. Natasha wasn't shaking anymore, but she still seemed dim and unlike herself. Maria hadn't ever thought she would see Natasha's marble foundations shaky. Maria didn't like it; it unsettled her the same way horror films did: to turn every silence into a potential, skulking threat. She wanted to turn herself into sand if that would shore up Natasha.

'What is it?' she pressed.

'I thought I'd come back to New Jersey, and Steve would be back in deprogramming,' Natasha said. 'It's stupid, but I just—I had anticipated it without thinking.' Maria kept the wince that shot thru her off her face. 'I thought Bucky'd be back in the Tower, and that I'd be back to helping—' She stopped again. 'I just didn't think I'd be alone at the end of all this.'

'You've got me,' Maria said without thinking. Nat looked up.

'And the distance doesn't matter,' Maria added, trying to gloss over that almost-declaration. 'I know how hard it is to be far from Steve, especially when you were there for the worst parts before, but the distance doesn't mean they wouldn't have trusted you this time around. The distance doesn't mean you've lost them.'

'I outed them,' Nat said. 'Spied on Bucky, for months, for an organization I only thought was wrong for suing him, and it turned out to be HYDRA. And they forgave me for it, but do you put in the effort to keep in touch with someone who—'

'To keep in touch with you, their friend, their close friend? Yes,' Maria said. 'Bucky didn't not-write you off face-to-face so he could wait to do it by satellite. He forgave you because he meant it.'

'I let Steve get taken,' Nat said. She leaned forward into Maria's arms, as tho Maria's wet clothes didn't negate the point of Natasha's towel. Maria wrapped her arms as snugly around Nat as she had the towel. 'I let Rumlow activate his programming and steal him away.'

'Everyone made the same mistake,' Maria said. 'Do you think for a second Bucky's blaming you and not himself?' Nat snorted a short laugh, and a significant amount of tension drained from her frame, swirling and disappearing like water down the drain.

'Not when you say it like that,' Nat said into Maria's shirt.

'So don't be the dumbass you always say he's being. Don't blame yourself for this,' Maria said. 'You did good.'

'I shot a man in the head,' Nat grumbled. 'Practically point-blank, and with the Accords, I'll have to defend that choice to the oversight board. Tony didn't even think it was the right—'

'You might not. The inquiry won't last long,' Maria said. 'I stayed in every loop there was about this; the State Department is too embarrassed about this to try to drag anybody over the coals. Ross is in a scramble to pretend he wasn't negligent when he let Zemo scam his background check, forget everything else. Nobody's coming after you for this.'

'You won't be alone, even if they did,' Maria said. She pushed Nat away far enough to meet her eyes, to let the promise sink in. Nat's grey eyes flicked between hers for a moment, and then she nodded, accepting Maria's certainty as her own. 'Let me tuck you in, and then I'll bring you something to eat.'

'No,' said Natasha. 'You'll drip all over my hardwood.' Maria felt an unexpected laugh break out of her, even in the tense air, at that. Maria wasn't ignorant of the puddle that had dripped from her jeans onto the tile of Nat's bathroom, but she might, in her worry for Nat and not the wood, have wandered her soaked socks thruout the apartment. It was just like Nat to worry about her lovely birch floors.

'All right,' Maria agreed. 'I'll leave my wet clothes here, and then I'll bring you—'

'Just leave your wet clothes and come lie with me,' Nat demanded. 'I just—I wouldn't have been brave enough to call you, but I'm really glad I came home and found you here.'

Maria's cheeks flushed warm despite the chill from her wet clothes. Natasha reached out and touched Maria's hand, holding them still for a moment too long.

^^^

Rogers was smaller than she had thought he would be. Even Wakandans had heard of the Winter Soldier, and she'd expected someone with such rumours behind himself to seem more intimidating than herself. As it was, he was about her height, and docile. He’d been frantic and confused when she’d knocked and pushed open the pocket door to the jet's sleeping cabin. He’d calmed when he’d settled his eyes on her, like she was familiar enough that she felt compelled to ask:

‘What is it? Do you know me?’

Rogers shook his head. Barnes seemed more unsettled by her question than Rogers’ condition, but it didn’t feel unreasonable to her to ask him. Impossible things happened all the time. The Winter Soldier having seen her face-to-face before? It was unlikely, but weirder things had happened. If Crossbones had recovered his bombs, Shuri would have been with her father in that UN building; she might have been close enough to the meeting chambers to have been hurt too, if Crossbones had succeeded.

'Will you lie here for me?' she asked him. Rogers hopped up onto the surgical table in her lab at her words but hesitated to lay prone for her. 'It's safe; it won't hurt,' she promised, gripping him and guiding him into the correct spot on the table. 'Lay down for me, like this.' He let her settle him into the right spot under her lights. He stared up at them and she wondered if they were scary to someone who’d been thru what he had. Barnes hovered still, but he'd stopped trembling like he had when he came off the plane with her and Okoye.

'Today I'm going to make sure you are the only one who can command your mind, OK?' she told Rogers. He nodded up at her. He finally met her eyes. Shuri smiled, trying to assure him. 'I bet this is scary,' she said. 'But it won't hurt, and when you wake up, you will feel better.'

'When I wake up,' he echoed. Shuri nodded. She lifted her wrist, touching the kimoyo bead that controlled the surgical table. The bead glowed for a moment, and Rogers's eyes grew heavy as he blinked.

'You should feel very calm, very tired,' she told him. 'It will be all right. Go to sleep.' Rogers let out a little sighing noise, like the feeling of the nonchemical sedation was strange enough for him to try to resist sleep despite himself. Shuri beckoned Barnes closer. 'He's nervous,' she told him. 'Help him to sleep.'

Barnes rushed to Rogers's side, having lingered outside the border made by the bulkheads around her table. He'd taken her order not to touch anything in her lab too seriously; he didn't even touch the table, not even leaning into it as he leaned over Rogers.

'I'll be here the whole time,' Barnes promised, settling his hand on Rogers' temple. Rogers leaned into the touch, already some of his tension going slack. Barnes stroked his hand over the short blond hair covering Rogers' skull. 'I love you so much.'

'Bucky,' Rogers sighed, before the relaxing stimulation of his hypothalamus became too much for him to resist. Maybe Barnes reduced his anxiety enough that the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus swept into sleep. Barnes didn't step back as Rogers' breath deepened into sleepy huffs. Shuri watched his face for a moment, intruding on his intimate and chaste moment. She wasn't used to seeing white faces; it was strange to see the same expression her brother wore for Nakia on such pale features.

'Thank you,' she chirped. Barnes looked up at her and regretfully lifted her hand so he could start. Shuri stepped closer to the table and waited for him to step back. ‘I know I told you not to touch anything, but you are allowed to sit down,' she pointed out, when he continued to hover by the table. His eyes snapped away from Rogers to her.

'Right,' Barnes said, understanding that he was crowding her. 'Sorry.' He wandered over to a stool near another one of her workstations. 'Can I bring this closer?' he asked. ‘Or should—‘

'You can sit there,' she said, pointing at a corner of the surgical table's small bay. Barnes moved the stool and sat obediently.

Shuri turned her attention back to her table, touching buttons and beginning the scan of Rogers’ brain. She could tell already that his brain was the worst one she'd worked with. She had invented this type of surgery with neurologists and had only applied it to accidental damage. It was going to be something else, to apply it to the shreds of Rogers the colonizers’ animalistic and cruel methods had left. She hoped that the scars were shallow enough to be erased in full. She hoped she could lift this intentional damage as well as she could lift damage from accidents. Being thrown from a hoverbike without a helmet was a far cry from having almost-Nazis dig around in your head, but perhaps she could do just as much good for this man as she had others.

'There is a lot to fix,' she said, when her scans completed and the table provided her with a hologram of Rogers' nervous system. 'They have left switches and dead zones and scars.'

'But you can do it?'

'I can help him.’ Barnes nodded. Shuri turned the hologram of Rogers' brain, starting her work.

It was incredible, the way certain nerve paths had been taken out of the control of the brain itself, left to light up only with external commands. Shuri had never seen anything like it; it might have been terrible for Steve to be stuck with this extra, closed system in his head. She wondered if he had even been aware of it, or if when it took over, he was lost, shut out of his own body. She pinched the floating light with her thumb and forefinger, and the closed loop began to shift and open.

The beginning of the fix should have started hope and curiosity up in her chest, but instead, she kept being distracted by the basket case in the corner. She lowered her hands for a moment and glared at him.

'Please relax,' Shuri ordered. Barnes's eyes shot up from where he was staring at his boyfriend, caught out. He lowered his thumb from where he'd been gnawing on his nail. Lowering his hand from his mouth, he started wringing it in his other. Shuri turned her attention back to the scan of Rogers's brain after rolling her eyes. 'Seriously, white man, you are making me nervous.'

'Sorry,' Barnes said. He stilled his hands but they started their anxious wringing again too soon. ‘It's not that I mistrust you; I just—' He stopped himself and his wringing hands intensified.

'He's going to be all right,' Shuri promised. 'I should be able to fix almost everything, and I am already making good progress.'

'But it's just a hologram of his brain,' Barnes said. Shuri laughed.

'We don't need to cut people open anymore, blood everywhere, all dramatic,' Shuri told him. 'Not for things like this. I manipulate the scan, and ultrasound stimulates tissue and directs the corrections.'

She wouldn't be able to fix everything wrong with Rogers’ brain; he'd been living with damage for so long that his neurons had given up on certain scars, on certain dead zones. Some of his functions were in different spots than she had come to expect from her work developing these ultrasonic surgery methods, or were split into two sections, one which would light up and take over with certain commands. All the same, she could reverse the big changes forced by HYDRA's machine; the changes were carved with obvious strokes and mistakes an amateur sculptor might make in her first attempt with clay. Clay could be moulded back into a ball if something went wrong; Shuri had to try to stretch healthy brain back to its own shape. It was harder and she would not be able to erase everything that had been scorched into flesh.

'Wow,' Barnes breathed. 'I didn't realize I was watching you operate on him.'

'What, you think I am just looking around?'

'I did, yeah,' he admitted. Shuri shook her head as she chuckled again; how silly that seemed to her. It was obvious what she was doing, but not to someone from another time and another place than Wakanda besides. 'Why do his hands keep moving like that?' Shuri looked at Rogers' hands; they were just giving off little twitches here and there, but his sleepy breaths remained unchanged and unstressed.

'Because I am touching his brain, which controls them,' she said, turning back to her work unconcerned. 'He's not in pain; don't worry.' Barnes took his turn to laugh.

'I worry about everything,' he admitted. ‘But you can fix him like this?’

‘Well. Even our surgery can’t force the brain to more than its willing,’ Shuri told him. ‘Some of these scars are so old that they are how the brain knows itself. Some of these scars are so deep that new connections won’t mimic old ones; they'll be new and foreign to him.’ Barnes said nothing.

Shuri didn’t apologize for being unable to heal everything. She was not a god and these white men were already lucky her brother had extended his welcome to them. They were even luckier she knew how to help them. They'd already received the closest any mortal could give to a miracle. Their parents would be displeased at the foreigners arrival—Most of the council elders would be displeased, and the politicians would not like it either. Shuri supposed she didn’t mind, but she had to admit it was strange. If you had asked her if she ever thought she’d be operating on a sort-of American, she would have said no.

‘Is he going to wake up when you finish?’ Barnes asked after letting her work for a long time. He had leaned his elbows on his knees and started gnawing on his thumbnail again. He lowered his hand to speak to her; it seemed to remind him he was supposed to be pretending to be calm for her. ‘I mean, is he gonna wake up right away?’

‘He will probably go into a real sleep when I am done,’ Shuri said. ‘But he will wake.’

'And this?' she asked, tapping the metal box embedded in Rogers' skull. 'It looks like this is for hearing but there's all this space.'

'It—Yeah, it's for hearing. When he was a prisoner, his captors also used it to pump his brain with drugs,' Barnes said. 'He lost some of his hearing to a fever when he was small.' Shuri pulled a face at that; it was gross and terrible that he'd been left with such a device.

'Why did they leave it there?' she asked. Barnes shrugged.

'Doctors, where I'm from, didn't think they could without damaging his brain,' Barnes said. 'They don't have this magic hologram to fix anything that went wrong, tho.' Shuri laughed. She'd grown up amongst the wonders of Wakanda; she was beyond accustomed to their advanced technology. Not only was Barnes from the relatively primitive United States, he was also really from the past.

'Well, when he's feeling better, I'll make him one that isn't such a big thing,' Shuri said. It would be good for his brain to have that space back to itself; with his enhanced healing, his brain might really make use of the space, regenerate where it couldn't before. She wondered if Rogers would want improvements to his arm too, or if he was content or attached to the awkward exoframing and bright colours.

'It works fine,' Barnes said. 'The doctors in the States said it couldn't be changed without risking brain damage, besides.'

'Just because something works doesn't mean it can't be improved, Captain Barnes,' Shuri told him, mockingly polite even if her brother weren't here to hear her.

'You can call me Bucky, if you'd like,' Barnes said. 'And you can call him Steve when he wakes up.'

'You two are my first white friends,' Shuri told him, lightening the mood as she finished what she could do in one session for Rogers. Barnes—Bucky: he cackled at that, unreasonably amused. She smiled as she dimmed the scan of Rogers' brain, ready to wait and see how his body continued to heal and his brain adapted to the changes she and her ultrasonic surgery had begun.

'Well, I'm honoured,' he laughed. 'It's an honour to be your friend, Princess.'

^^^

Steven Rogers was just a boy, when he finally stood in front of T'Chaka. He was smaller than T'Chaka had thought; he had thought the boy only seemed so small next to Barnes's engineered form. He also hadn't thought that Rogers would have scars; he carried a few silvered lines across one side of his face. T'Chaka had heard of the fantastic healing powers the German scientists had given him when they'd captured him the first time; T'Chaka would not have anticipated Rogers would have had such marks. The King knew this boy's fate would likely be the last real decision he made for his country before his age passed his throne like his mantle to his son. T'Chaka understood that the youth he saw was simply a matter of some crazed white man's science preventing ageing, not real youth or inexperience, but the boy looked about twenty-five.

It was hard to imagine Rogers as different than any other twenty-five-year-old in Wakanda: the recent graduates, the new fathers, the new fiancés, the hopeful youth. It was hard to see him as different from the delinquent young men of twenty-five who left cities or prosperous farms for hard drugs and scavenging of shipwrecks in mud fields and the coasts of neighbouring countries. It was hard to imagine he'd been born nearly a century ago.

Actually, it was easy to see him as different from those men. Those men had defiant eyes and confident shoulders hiding scared hearts. This man had a skittish deposition and less assurance in himself than T'Chaka would have expected from the partner of a friend of his son's. He knew who Bucky Barnes was and he knew why his son held the man in esteem. He didn't understand why someone worthy of his son's esteem would want these skittish eyes.

‘Where did you get these?’ T’Chaka drew a finger across the air, mining along his face one of the lines across Rogers’.

‘Oh,’ Rogers said, like the question was a surprise. ‘Uh, shrapnel. A shell back in forty-one, Your Majesty.’ T’Chaka nodded.

'And why does Bucky Barnes love you?' the King asked, before they'd even introduced each other. It was a pointless courtesy; he knew who Rogers was and Rogers knew whom he stood in front of, waiting for a real verdict for his future. His son had been brash, not only to get involved in foreign affairs so publicly and to expose and risk the Panther but to bring foreigners back here. It had been one thing when T’Challa had gone to observe his friends in a visit to a prisoner, but this was another. It was another thing indeed to have invited a white man to stay.

'I don't know anymore,' Steve admitted. He was honest, at least.

'Sit,' T'Chaka said. Rogers hesitated, but settled into one of the plush council seats, the chamber empty but for them. T’Chaka watched the boy shift in his seat, resettling his weight as he took in the ancient architecture that to Rogers must be new in style. He himself had never expected to see an American under these windows, in one of these chairs as a guest. 'Try to think. My son was quite impressed with your Barnes when they met.'

Steve paused. 'I used to be a real person. It made sense then.'

'Are you not a person now?' T'Chaka asked. Rogers shook his head. 'Why not?'

'Because I don't even know what happened,' Rogers told him. He fixed his eyes on his nervous, twisting hands. 'Rumlow said some words and I was gone, right out of my own head. I'd promised everybody that I was safe to be around. I'd promised the President; I'd promised myself,' he said.

He stumbled over his words, getting stuck and trying again. T'Chaka wondered if this were only what Rogers looked like when the programming was half-worn off, or if the madman who'd kidnapped him had broken him good trying to control him again. He wondered what it must be like to be Rogers: to have been a competent field medic turned into a terrifying weapon and elite killer, an assassin so efficient some took the reports as myth and not fact: to be then reduced to struggling to piece together his words. He wondered how much Rogers might improve as his mind got used to the new connections in his brain T'Chaka's daughter had made.

'I said it was over and I lied,' Steve managed. 'I wasn't reliable or safe to be around. I lied without even knowing and Rumlow took me without me being able to do anything.'

'Any person is better than that,' Rogers said, sneering at himself. 'A person makes mistakes, but at least they have choices. I can't say people are safe from me because I didn't have a choice. If there are more words like that—I was _gone_.' He rubbed the back of his neck like he felt something there. 'A person is better than that.'

'So why should Bucky Barnes love you?' T'Chaka pressed. Rogers shrugged his left shoulder, the one with a blue hand sticking out of his sleeve. As soon as his eye was drawn to it, he wondered how long it would be before his brilliant and beneficent daughter had replaced it with something more sleek, less mechanical.

'I used to be more than this,' Steve said after T'Chaka waited a long while for him to consider the question. 'He remembers a lot of stuff that I don't. He knows who I was and who I am. I do love him, but I can't remember how I—I love him, truly, but the reason why is missing. I don't even remember how we met.'

T'Chaka considered that. He considered firstly how hard it must be to have feelings of passion without knowing their root or their source, when one was already living with the fear of compulsions much more dangerous than those of love. Should T'Chaka judge this man on who he was, or who he had been, or on the merit of protecting the lives and loves of those whom he had the potential to be forced to destroy? Should T'Chaka love like Bucky Barnes did: foolishly, avariciously, selflessly, and without regard to consequences?

Or should he see Rogers for what he saw himself as: a broken shell worth locking away to protect fully-formed, whole people, in case he proved to be a weapon?

'I don't know,' Rogers said, when the King posed that question.

'I just don't think I'm worth all this,' he added, shaking his head; he looked exhausted suddenly. 'If it's worth it to fight for me.' The King rarely saw unadulterated expressions like that on people who weren't his family; his presence was powerful and usually, the only things he saw were things demanded by etiquette. Rogers shook his head and his crushing expression was one of grief. T'Chaka wondered if Steve Rogers' grief was for his own personhood or the ones he'd seen destroyed to recapture him.

'I thought, before, that we'd gotten the programming out, that I healed enough to be a person again. I thought I was free. Now I know I was lying, that they can take me back whenever, so why should someone like you fight for my freedom now? Why should a king stick out their neck, maybe at the expense of his people?'

'I don't deserve to be protected,' Steve said. 'I can't do the same for anyone else. I let it all happen. I barely remember those days he had me—'

He broke off and it took him a long time to continue. T'Chaka held the silence, watching and waiting as Rogers gathered himself to go on.

'What if someone tried again, tried that here? I might not even know it had happened,' Rogers whispered. 'So. I don't deserve to be saved from the consequences of his actions. No one deserves to die if someone tries to use me or take me again. Shouldn't we make sure no one gets the chance to try?'

T'Chaka could hear thoughts pounding like wild horses in Rogers' skull. He waited.

'But the thing is,' Steve added, hesitantly, 'I also don't think people should have to deserve to be saved.'

'People shouldn't have to _suffer_ ,' Rogers said. 'When I was a medic, I saved people because I was a good person, not because they—It wasn't about that, about them deserving—if they were someone else's soldier, or a villager, or a collaborator—It wasn't—I just didn't want people to suffer. I don't want—'

'People shouldn't suffer.' Despite everything, he said it like it was simple. 'So it's not about deserving to be saved.'

T'Chaka felt almost speechless at that. He hadn't thought for a moment, bringing this broken boy here to be questioned about his fate, that he might say something like that. He'd thought people broken so badly couldn't think things so deeply kind.

'So I don't know,' Steve said when T'Chaka had mulled those words in silence for a long time. 'Your Majesty.' The formality felt odd suddenly, in the weight of Rogers' honesty, the intimacy of watching him manage his thoughts. After all, T'Chaka had brought the boy here with the intention of asking his advice on his own fate.

'Wakanda is not known to be infiltrated by HYDRA in the way other areas have been. I have never seen a threat of this in my land,' T'Chaka said. 'But I cannot say with certainty that what I have never seen won't come to pass. I am an old man, Rogers, and I've never seen someone like you.'

Rogers bowed his head at that. ‘I don’t know if I’m worth the risk,’ he said.

'This is the thing about risk,' T'Chaka said, thinking of all the times he had decided to play it safe, to be conservative, to hold his country and his people away from the world. He had abandoned his own blood on foreign soil, only for his son to start reaching out anyway. 'Sometimes you play it safe, and everything goes right, and you wish you'd risked it all anyway.'

He thought of his nephew, where that boy might have ended up when T'Chaka had left him orphaned and abandoned. T'Chaka wished sometimes that he'd brought the boy home, shoved him into a life as T'Challa's adopted brother. It would have been a risk to bring him to Wakanda. It would have been skirting the line of admitting to his role in his brother's death, as executioner at best, murderer at worst. It would have meant facing the vocal few who felt the War Dogs were insufficient, a futile effort to help the rest of the world.

It would have meant saving a boy who deserved to be the nephew of a King, not a street rat in Oakland.

T'Chaka was old and tired. He was not enough to take that risk now; there was nothing he could do about secrets a lifetime behind him. It would be now not only all the risks it was then, but to admit he'd been wrong for decades. He regretted giving up on his brother, and on abandoning his son, but those mistakes were a lifetime behind him. It was too late to remedy the past.

He wouldn't get another lifetime to grow to regret either decision in Rogers' fate.

'You should stay,' he decided. Rogers met his eye, again looking almost surprised. 'We'll find a community who's willing to shelter you, and your partner.'

'Thank you,' Rogers said. 'It's generous. It's kind, to let us stay.'

'We both know that if I were to send you back to the United States, that they would try to put you in their underwater jail like they tried to put those who helped finish Crossbones in Siberia.'

'With you,' T'Chaka admitted, 'they'd probably succeed.' Rogers nodded solemnly. 'My son brought you here and he's told me he believes Wakanda should bring others, those we already have limited programmes to assist. He intends to open our country to the world when I am gone.'

'Maybe this will be a mistake,' T'Chaka said. 'I don't know. I'll be in the next world, waiting to see.'

'Do you think bringing us here was a mistake?' Rogers asked. 'Do you think it'll make things in Wakanda worse?' T'Chaka honestly didn't know. He'd ruled like his father before him, as a cautious king. Wakanda remained safe and stable, but she also remained isolated. She remained like a jewel in a safe instead of shining in a brooch.

'Perhaps I've locked my people behind walls like the States would lock you behind bars,' T'Chaka said. 'Perhaps it doesn't matter that inside our borders are world splendours; perhaps we should be as open as other countries because the whole world is what our people deserve.'

'It was good to meet you, Rogers,' T'Chaka said. Rogers stood, leaping to his feet. He understood the dismissal; he bowed after a moment of hesitation as if to say goodbye.

'Thank you,' he said again. 'From Bucky and me, thank you.' The King nodded, and Rogers left.

T'Chaka sat by himself for a while in the council chambers. His father had sat in these same seats and would have sent this foreigner packing. His grandfather would have done the same. His son was different, and the world was changing.

'My love,' a voice called from behind him.

'Ramonda, my queen,' he called back. She rounded his chair, sitting near enough to him to lay a hand on his knee. 'The Americans are staying,' he reported. 'I'll respect our son's decision to shelter them; they will stay.' Ramonda nodded with a gentle smile. She didn't seem nearly as old as he did, still vibrant and young as if she were sustained by starlight and not food like mere mortals.

'I thought as much,' she said. 'Try not to worry. Our son is wiser than you think.'

'If he is wise, it is because he listens to you better than I have,' T'Chaka told her.

'Well, this is true,' Ramonda agreed. 'Come. Your daughter has a gift for you; come see it.' She stood then, taking the back of his chair and guiding him out of the chamber. He leaned his head against his wife's fingers where she rested them over the back of the chair.

 

^^^

 

Steve looked beautiful in the red cloth he'd dressed himself in today. Bucky still felt silly in clothes so different from the ones he wore in the West, but Steve seemed almost more comfortable in these threads than the ones he'd always swum in back in their day. They spent more time outside than they used to in Brooklyn; the strong summer sun of Africa had nearly bleached Steve's hair white. Bucky wondered if his own had lightened too. It was longer than it used to be, blowing into his eyes with the breeze off the river.

Steve's attention kept bouncing from his page to the trees over sparkling water. Bucky didn't understand how Steve had made it look like the light was bouncing off his paper like it bounced off the gentle ripples of the waterways. The trees unlike the ones at home didn't quite look right on the paper, but Steve kept poking at them, getting them closer to reality each time he did.

The next time Steve looked up, he caught Bucky staring. A smile burst across his face and he chuckled. He sat up straighter, facing Bucky. 'Why are you staring at me?'

'Got nothing better to do,' Bucky replied.

'We could do something,' Steve offered.

'No, you're drawing,' Bucky said. 'It's nice to watch you; I'm perfectly fine here.' Steve turned his attention back to his paper, content.

'If you could do anything you wanted today,' Steve said, 'what would it be?' Bucky sighed before he could help it. Steve looked over at him, reacting to the change in tone. Bucky marvelled at that; it had been months of outpatient care before Steve had been able to read his body language, not just take his words at face value. It was remarkable he could do it immediately, after Shuri rooted around in his brain using only light and sound. 'Come on, what do you want to do?' Bucky faltered before steeling himself and owning up to what he felt.

‘I just wanna go home,’ he said. ‘Everything we do takes us further from there.’

‘And you mean—?’ Steve clarified.

‘Our time, our _home_ ,’ Bucky complained. ‘I always wanted to go back there.’

‘Oh, Bucky.’ Steve shook his head, smudging charcoal without looking up. 'Everything would have been different, even there. When you came home on leave, you were so distant. You could barely stand to be alone with me once we’d spent the first night together. It was like you thought I’d see war like mud on you, or like I’d catch something if you didn’t avoid my eyes.’

Bucky remembered their reunion in Brooklyn; Steve had been rail-thin but alive and with a clear, dry chest. Steve had crept out of bed early to pick up his newspapers from the Eagle, and Bucky had trembled in his attempts to return to sleep, fitful and afraid of every city noise he used to be accustomed to. Every sound was a threat, of a shell or a bullet or something worse. He hadn't managed to fall back asleep; he'd gone and hauled some hot water from the tap on the ground floor of the building, then avoided Steve by visiting with his sisters. It had been harder for him than it ever had been to act like himself, smile bright and scoop them into hugs. He wondered if they'd seen thru him like Steve seemed to have done.

‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ Bucky said, unable to keep himself from protesting the point. 'It—I—'

He broke off. It had been like that and he knew it. He remembered; he'd been so relieved and overjoyed to see Steve again, and the next morning, as soon as Steve left to work, the tense and anxious feeling he had at the front was back, creeping thru him. That tenseness had stayed with him; he had gotten used to living with stiff shoulders and rare smiles. When he'd lost that anxiety and tension in therapy, he had had it so long, he couldn't even remember his childhood without. Bucky hated that, of all the things that had survived the ravages of Steve’s leaky mind, his own anxiety back then was one of them.

For a moment, he worried if he'd brought it back to himself without knowing. Every noise outside their hut at night kept him awake. He wondered if Steve remembered his anxiety from back then because he still had it now.

‘You got us a date for your last night, instead of staying in with me,’ Steve pointed out in the silence. Bucky bristled because that was damning.

‘You apparently wouldn’t have ended up here if I hadn’t,’ Bucky shot back. Part of him was still so furious Steve had been foolish enough to fill out a fourth false enlistment form; part of him would always be so furious that Steve would go to war willingly when Bucky would have given anything to come home to him. Steve laughed as if Bucky was having a gas when he had been trying to pick a fight.

‘Yeah, 's all worth it then,’ said Steve, chuckling.

‘Is it?’ Bucky dared. Steve looked up. He took in Bucky’s unamused face and his smile smoked out.

‘Um,’ Steve said. His lounging posture disappeared as he tried to parse Bucky’s tone. ‘You sound serious.’

‘I am. Are you happy here?’ Bucky asked. He was achingly nervous, all the time. He was desperately waiting for some other shoe to drop. He tried every day to ignore the obsessive worry that they’d be deported or extradited or worse: that someone might try what Rumlow had done for the sheer terror of it. Bucky still shook when he tried to sleep.

‘Sure, I’m happy,’ Steve said. He said it without hesitation and with the tiniest shrug.

‘No, I mean, honestly,’ Bucky said. ‘Are you happy?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Yes,’ Bucky said. Steve was silent for a long time. Bucky could see him deciding how much of the truth to give.

‘It’s nice here. We have it good here,’ Steve said. ‘The children like us, and the herders don’t mind my stupid questions about animals they’ve known all their lives. The women adore you.’ He shut his sketchbook with a finger keeping his page as if he knew his generous half-truth wasn’t going to satisfy Bucky. Bucky tried to hold himself back, to keep his anxious desire to know everything to himself. He wanted to believe Steve was content and that they were safe and that those things were enough. He wanted that almost as badly as he wished he could go home.

‘Why aren’t you really happy?’ Bucky asked when his attempt at willpower failed; he shattered the tension in the air when he did so. Steve sighed and then caved, meeting Bucky’s eyes and telling the difficult full-truth.

‘I feel lost a lot,’ Steve admitted. ‘I don’t always know where I am, and I can’t always tell what’s around me.’ Bucky nodded. He had expected that; he had always been good at seeing when Steve didn’t know his surroundings but was just lucid enough to pretend he was unfazed. He could see it happen sometimes: Steve would look up and for a moment his gaze would flit around himself, struggling to put details and colours into place.

‘It’s not getting better like it did before.’

Bucky winced; he hadn’t known that Steve could feel his brain’s stagnation, injuries caused by Rumlow’s clumsy use of the recalibration machine and refusing to heal. Bucky hadn’t known Steve could feel his healing abilities failing to deliver a second miracle. It was harder for Bucky to tell how Steve had recovered; Shuri had fixed so much so quickly that Bucky had been surprised when she'd admitted even Wakandan science couldn't truly reverse all the brain damage.

'I look around sometimes,’ said Steve, waving his hand over the river as if showing it to Bucky, ‘and I feel lost and the only reason I'm sure I'm not back with HYDRA is that we're the only white people here, and HYDRA split from the Nazis. And if I were back there, I'd never be outside in the sun like this.' Bucky felt weirdly comforted by that horrific fact: that the presence of black people, happy, free, and safe in their own homeland, assured Steve he was safe, because HYDRA only ever used people like them as experiment fodder, never as doctors or handlers or anything else. Bucky imagined for a moment how differently the war might have gone if Schmidt had been obsessed with the Wakandan myths instead of Norwegian ones, if he'd tried to steal vibranium or use the Wakandan science to perfect his eugenics instead.

‘Do you lose time?’ Bucky asked.

‘No,’ Steve said. Then predictably, he joked: ‘Thank God and Shuri, am I right?’ Bucky chuckled. Steve grinned for a moment.

‘But I feel like my arm used to,’ Steve said after a long time. He fiddled with his pencil, avoiding Bucky eyes.

‘It used to—The plates were sharp,’ Steve explained, as if Bucky didn’t know that. ‘I don’t know if the handlers did that on purpose or if the plates just sharpened against themselves over time... but the metal used to cut me, sometimes, and all my clothes—Anything of yours that I touched, I could ruin.’ Bucky remembered the tiny holes lining Steve’s side of the bed and along one sleeve of each of his shirts, the way Steve would hoard the arm to himself with an almost constant nervous air. He remembered Steve pretending not to feel like a freak when he discovered he couldn’t knit with the metal prosthetic, too aptly designed for ripping to help him weave fibre strands together.

‘I would cut people when I didn’t mean to and couldn’t even feel it,’ Steve told him. ‘I’d look up and someone would be bleeding—because of me. Having that arm meant I was still a weapon, even if I didn’t want to be.’ Steve shrugged again. Bucky fished for something to say but he couldn’t come up with a comfort for that. He had felt like nothing more than a weapon when SHIELD had sued him; he couldn’t imagine how he’d have felt if SHIELD had won a right to command him, or if he'd made people bleed by accident, many times over. He didn’t know how he would have continued if they’d forced him like HYDRA had forced Steve.

‘I thought this new arm changed that,’ Steve said. ‘Civilians have this arm, basically. I thought I was really a person again.’ He laughed, but the sound was sad and small. 'I thought I was just a guy with a shitty memory, and the best girl in the world.' He smiled at Bucky, reaching out to tuck one of his curls behind his ear. He withdrew before Bucky could lean into him.

'Stevie,’ Bucky protested. He ached to lean into Steve.

‘Then Rumlow took me,’ Steve went on. ‘He must've spent years planning it. Radicalized a soldier and murdered a doctor to pull it off; left bodies everywhere he brought me. I can’t trust the idea that I’m safe to be around now. I thought I was free of the programme before. People died because I was wrong.’

Bucky wanted to promise Steve that Shuri and the Wakandan doctors were sure of their solutions, that the technology here outpaced anything HYDRA had ever had. Shuri was just a baby at sixteen, but she had sounded wiser than anyone Bucky had met. He wanted to interrupt and rave about her brilliance and how she had absolutely cured Steve, that the safeguards she’d made in his replaced hearing implant would protect him if there were any unknown compulsions that emerged; Bucky wanted to promise a million things to take away Steve’s fear.

‘I’ll always be a weapon someone might try to take,’ Steve finished, an echo of the anxious voice in Bucky's head. ‘We can’t change that.’

None of the things he could say would really address the point of Steve's fear; whether Steve was cured or not, someone might try to take him again. Even if Steve were perfectly cured and the attempt failed, there might be deaths in this little village for it. Steve was always going to be the subject of rumour in underground crime circles and a beacon for potential trouble. Even Shuri and her brother couldn't change that. Since Wakanda had begun sharing with the world, the beacon of trouble Steve was might not seem so irretrievable from behind their borders.

‘We have the Colonel’s notebook.' Bucky tried to assure Steve anyway, unable to do anything but play the protector. 'Shuri worked thru and pulled all the triggers out.’

‘And what about Rumlow’s notebook?’ Steve asked. ‘We don’t know if he even wrote down the stuff he installed in me, or if it died with him. I didn’t even know he’d made his own words to take me over like that.' Steve looked down at his hands, trembling where they held his place in his notebook. ‘I’ve got no way of knowing how many other words he had.’ He was hiding something from Bucky, hiding whatever it was that made his voice tremble more than it had since Peggy died. 'He did things to me that I should have remembered and didn’t.’ Bucky grew cold under the heat of the sun.

‘My body’s just not mine like it used to be,’ Steve finished. Bucky’s cold feeling turned sick and hot, like a lead-acid battery had been punctured and was spewing smoke in his lungs. He’d wanted to know everything, but he didn’t know how to possibly press for more. The way Steve would stiffen if Bucky touched his neck a certain way, the way he brushed nothing from his forearm a dozen times a day like he could feel someone’s grip there, how he startled if Bucky curled up behind him at night without voicing himself: it all seemed sinister with that sentence behind them. It made the taste of bile appear on his tongue, imagined but acrid.

'But I'm happy here, as happy as I can be when I know these people have taken a risk by accepting me—us. And maybe no one will end up thinking it's worth it to try for me again. Shuri tried all the codes in the notebook on me; none of them work anymore. They don't even hurt.'

'Actually,' Steve added, his tone brightening. He managed to look up again. 'So much that used to hurt me doesn't. I can think about how I feel about you, or anything I feel intensely about: it doesn't hurt like it used to. Even when I’m lost: it doesn’t hurt or scare me like it used to. I can—I can make my own decisions again, always. I don't get stuck like I used to.’

'Just lost,' Bucky said. Steve nodded.

'Just lost. It's better, in a lot of ways, Buck. Other ways, ‘s just different.' Steve put his sketchbook properly aside, scrubbing a hand over his short, pale hair.

‘I used to—It hurt to think complex thoughts, when I first came back, or, when I came back the second time, depending—It used to hurt to decide stuff, so when I was lost, sometimes I also couldn’t calm myself down,’ Steve explained. ‘There was no way to look at the lamp and the blanket and the nightstand and make myself figure I was in our bedroom. No way to decide that I was safe and could relax. It doesn't hurt to do any of that now.’

‘Sometimes I wouldn’t recognize you,’ Steve said. He said it in the same voice he’d used to explain wake up procedure to Bucky: like it was nearly too much to think of. It was emphatic in a way Bucky didn’t expect; he didn’t think Steve remembered things from when he wasn’t lucid. Now he worried how much of what was left in Steve’s head were memories of being lost and afraid.

‘I wouldn't know you but I’d feel this—‘ Steve stumbled, and his voice came back bright as the sparkles on the gentle water. ‘I’d feel a _pull_ , a draw, and I know now it’s ‘cause I’m in love with you, but I wouldn’t know any of it then. I’d just feel this pull for this stranger.’ Steve paused again, but this time not having tripped over his heart as it fell out of his mouth. He shook his head, giving almost a shiver. 'It was terrifying, not to recognize you. I don’t miss that one bit.’

‘But we ended up here because Rumlow murdered people. Sometimes I sort of helped,’ Steve said. Bucky tried to protest but his throat was so tight from listening to Steve. He couldn’t believe, all those times Steve, lost, looked at him in fear, that what had scared him was his own big heart. Bucky had always wondered how he could do better, be better, approach louder or softer or project his movements more or not move at all; he used to be desperate for Steve to recognize him when Steve wasn’t lucid. He would never have thought, all those times, Steve felt for him even when he didn't know him.

'A lot of bad things happened to get us here, to get Shuri to fix me,' Steve said. 'I’m gonna have to carry that for a while. Besides, you're more scared day-to-day than I am. You're not sleeping well again.'

'Yeah,' Bucky admitted, with a sigh. He didn't want to talk about how nervous he felt, but he wanted to lie to Steve even less. Steve stared at him, waiting for more. Bucky felt stubborn but really, he couldn’t speak past the nervous spike that had sprung up in his chest.

'Yeah, what?' Steve pressed. 'Yeah, you're not gonna talk to me? Yeah, you're scared; yeah, you’re nervous; you're not sleeping: what?'

'Yeah, I'm—I know,' Bucky floundered. Steve shifted where he sat, moving close enough to bump his shoulder into Bucky. Bucky swayed with it in play, even tho Steve hadn't pushed him hard enough to deserve it. It knocked loose the spike, leaving a smaller, duller fright behind.

'I don't want you to _know_ it,' Steve said, gentle as could be. 'I want you to be happy too.'

'I'm trying,' Bucky said. Steve kept an eye on Bucky's profile, and Bucky was too weak to look over and face him. Steve decided to keep needling him instead of dropping it like Bucky hoped he would.

'You're scared someone's gonna take me again, huh?' Bucky shrugged a shoulder, because that was only part of it. Part of him was frozen with fear at the prospect of losing Steve again, but most of him was stuck on the fact that he already had, twice. He was lucky enough to have Steve back, but his idiot's heart was still clenched and petrified.

'It just feels like it was my fault again,' Bucky said. In his clear peripheral, he could read surprise on Steve's face, blooming like a moonflower. 'In Nigeria, I just didn't—I didn't listen to you.' Bucky tried to haul in a deep breath but his chest was too tense to really let him. He huffed instead. 'It was obvious from the second you saw Rumlow that something was wrong. I should have called it that second, and instead, I gave him time to drop a codeword.’

'What happened in Nigeria wasn't your fault—'

‘All this—Everything started because I let you get hit,’ Bucky interrupted. ‘On that train, I should've—Protocol was to check and disable the gunman. I knocked him down and then—Fuck, I let him get back up and he blasted you. I thought you'd fucking _died_. I was your captain. What else do you call it?'

'It was _wartime_. _Shit happens_ ,' Steve snapped. He pulled away from where he'd leaned into Bucky, his comforting tone shifting almost to anger. 'As if that was the first time any of the Commandos ignored protocol because we had to. Shit happens; it doesn't always—I was pinned down; would you have rather fucking left me to get shot with a steel bullet while you dealt with the blue gun instead?' Bucky tried to protest, and Steve barrelled over him.

'No, you came after me,' Steve said. 'You saved my life, and then _the war continued_. It's not like you took a nap instead of disabling the gun. Like, fuck.' Steve shook his head, looking annoyed down to his bones. Bucky still knew it was his fault, but it was incredible to hear how ridiculous Steve found the idea. It was amazing—a miracle—to know Steve hadn't blamed him as he died—as he fell, not like Bucky had always thought and tried to reconcile while grieving. He hadn't lain in that river with his arm in shreds thinking Bucky had failed him.

'You can't see the future, Bucky,' Steve said, gentler once his curse vented some of his frustration. 'You moved quick 'cause I needed you, not because you were being negligent.'

'Yeah, well, I didn't move quick enough in Nigeria,' Bucky said. 'Just stood there and watched the fucking camera.'

'Yeah,' Steve agreed. 'But there was that doctor with me. The doctor acted like everything was fine, so you thought things weren't as bad as they were; I can't blame you for that. I don't blame you for that.'

'It was my fault,' Bucky said again. Steve rolled his eyes so hard it looked like he could see the inside of his own skull.

'You're so fucking stupid sometimes,' Steve said. 'You trusted who you thought was a doctor, not even _any_ doctor: you thought it was someone who'd trained _Melissa_. What the fuck else were you supposed to do but trust them?'

‘It wasn’t a doctor—‘

‘Yeah, Buck, you shoulda magically known what nobody else did,’ Steve said. He rolled his eyes again. ‘Brilliant. Sam would kick your ass if he heard you feeding your guilt complex like this.’

'I promised you'd be safe and you weren't,' Bucky whispered, after a long time in the tense silence under the warm sun. 'How can you not blame me?'

'You're the love of my life,' Steve said. 'When I'd forgotten my own name, I still thought you were coming for me. I remembered you when I didn't even know I was a person. You've pulled me out of every bit of trouble I've ever gotten myself into.'

'How could I blame you for anything?'

Bucky felt his eyes burn at that. Steve's claim that he'd held onto the idea of Bucky when he'd lost everything else about his personhood: it was unbelievable to him. He hadn't been enough to keep Steve safe, ever. He used to get sick no matter how careful Bucky tried to be, used to run himself ragged working, used to get into fights whenever he had to stand up for somebody. Bucky had never been enough to keep him safe; he'd never been able to keep Steve from getting hurt. Even if he showed up in time to haul someone off Steve, he was never able to swipe away a bruise and sometimes he couldn't even stop the bleeding.

'Buck,' Steve sighed. Bucky tried to say: _I'm not crying; I'm not_ , but his voice wouldn't move. All he could do was shake his head. 'Hey, come 'ere,' Steve said. He reached out and folded Bucky into him. Bucky crumpled into Steve's arms, his chest breaking open, leaking his heart onto the ground.

'This wasn't your fault,' Steve promised, kissing Bucky's hair. He felt weak, but his shoulders hitched. He cried into Steve's chest. 'It just wasn't.'

'I wouldn't be here without you,' Steve said. 'You saved me so many times. You're the whole reason T'Challa came after me; you're the whole reason he asked his sister to help me. You did every good thing I needed.'

Bucky tried to let go of his guilt with shaky hands. Steve tucked his fingers into Bucky's hair, cradling the back of his skull where Bucky's head rested against Steve. 'I like your hair like this. Suits you.' Bucky had never had his hair this long before; he'd never felt Steve tangle himself completely in his hair. For some reason, the compliment made Bucky laugh thru his tears.

'What?' Steve asked, laughing too. 'I do; you look nice.' Bucky tried to pull away, wiping his face dry. Steve wouldn't let him withdraw completely. 'Hey,' he said when Bucky wouldn't meet his eye.

Bucky looked up.

'You're all I got, Buck,' Steve said. 'I'm nothing without you.'

'I love you, you know,' Bucky said, thinking of the time he'd visited Steve in deprogramming, when Steve had said Bucky couldn't love him, not when he didn't know who he was. Bucky had loved him even then. He loved Steve, if it were possible, even more now. He told Steve as much. Steve smiled, soft but bright.

'Wow,' Steve breathed. He leaned in and kissed Bucky, right in the open, under the sun, by the river, in their new home. 'Lucky me.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading such a long long story. I've literally spent years on this and I'm so excited to have it finished for you. Please leave kudos or comment; I'd love to know what you thought. 
> 
> I also want to print out a "book" copy of this series to keep on my own shelves; I want to commission a book cover for it, so if you're an artist who's read thru and think they might be interested, I'd be so happy to hear from you. You can find me under the same username on Instagram. 
> 
> Thanks again to everyone for reading. 
> 
>  
> 
> :)


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